The U.S. military has eliminated Iran’s “entire ballistic missile production capacity” in just under two weeks of intensive operations, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth told reporters on Friday, adding that “every company that builds every component of those missiles has been functionally defeated.”
“We’re shooting down and destroying what missiles they still have in stock, but more importantly, ensuring that they have no ability to make more,” Hegseth said as Operation Epic Fury entered its 13th day. The United States has struck more than 6,000 regime targets since combat operations began, destroying the Islamic Republic’s “production lines, their plants, their defense innovation centers” as well as “factory lines all across Iran,” he told reporters.
Hegseth said operations are on pace “to defeat, destroy, disable all of [Iran’s] meaningful military capabilities at a pace the world has never seen before.” As it stands, “Iran doesn’t have a functioning air force” and its “entire navy is at the bottom of the Persian Gulf.”
Iran’s ballistic missile fire has dropped by 90 percent since war operations began and strikes have plummeted by 95 percent, according to Hegseth, who went on to confirm for the first time publicly that the regime’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, “is wounded and likely disfigured” by air strikes in the war’s earliest days.
“They’ve gone underground, cowering. That’s what rats do,” Hegseth said of the hardline regime’s remaining leaders. “They know that the military capabilities of their evil regime are crumbling. They can barely communicate, let alone coordinate.”
Friday’s operations will again mark “the highest volume of strikes that America has put over the skies of Iran and Tehran,” Hegseth said, signaling that the conflict is far from over. “The number of sorties and number of bomber pulses, the highest yet, [are] ramping up and only up.”
The United States has relied heavily on cutting-edge technologies throughout the conflict, ramping up the use of artificial intelligence, cyber attacks, electronic warfare, and signal jamming. This enabled the military to quickly “defeat the missiles, missile launcher, and defense industrial base” inside Iran, according to Hegseth.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine, speaking alongside Hegseth, disclosed that the U.S. military successfully employed precision strike missiles in combat for the first time in history. He said the Third Battalion of 27th Field Artillery Regiment, from Fort Bragg, N.C., fired “deep into enemy territory” with PrSM missiles, surface-to-surface weapons with long-range capabilities.
Caine said the United States has used high-mobility artillery rocket systems, or HIMARS, and long-range guided missiles known as ATACMS. The U.S. military used the latter “to sink multiple ships, including a submarine.”
The United States has destroyed every single Soleimani-class warship in the Iranian Navy—vessels named after Qassem Soleimani, the terrorist general President Donald Trump killed in January 2020—depriving Tehran of anti-ship missiles and anti-aircraft weapons.
However, Caine cautioned, “Iran still has the capability to harm friendly forces and commercial shipping” in the Strait of Hormuz. While American forces are working to clear the commercial shipping lane of mines and other threats, the international oil trade still remains at risk.
“The only thing prohibiting transit in the strait right now is Iran shooting at shipping,” Caine. “We’ve made it a priority to target Iran’s mine laying enterprise, their mine layers, the naval bases and depots, in addition to the missiles that could influence the Straits.” Throughout the day, American forces will concentrate attacks on Iran’s “industrial base to include factories [and] weapons warehouses.”
The United States will engage in its “heaviest day of kinetic fires across the operating area” to counter Iranian operations in the Strait of Hormuz, Caine said.
“CENTCOM continues to attack ballistic missile and drone capabilities so that they are no longer a threat to us, forces, our bases or our partners,” he told reporters. “They’re continuing to destroy the Iranian Navy to ensure freedom of navigation, and this means going after Iran’s mine laying capability, and destroying their ability to attack commercial vessels, and we’re targeting their defense industrial base so they cannot rebuild the capabilities that can harm America’s interests or our partners in the future.”
Caine also spoke about the four U.S. service members killed earlier Thursday when their refueling plane crashed in Iraq. U.S. Central Command said the incident “was not due to hostile fire or friendly fire” and that a second plane involved landed safely, with recovery efforts still underway. The death from the plane crash has now risen to six U.S. service members. A fire also broke out aboard the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier, injuring several but causing no fatalities.
“We believe and hope that everyone will be okay, and we’re grateful for that,” Caine said about the carrier fire.
Hegseth also called out the mainstream media in his remarks for peddling “fake headlines” and overplaying Iran’s capabilities. Networks like CNN, he noted, have claimed that “the Trump administration underestimated the Iran war’s impact on the Strait of Hormuz.” Reports of this nature are “patently ridiculous,” he said.
“What should the banner read instead?” Hegseth asked reporters gathered at the Pentagon. “How about, ‘Iran increasingly desperate’? Because they are, they know it, and so do you if it can be admitted.”
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