A report in The New York Times has indicated President Donald Trump and War Secretary Pete Hegseth have drastically overestimated the U.S. military’s success in Iran.
According to the report, many top officials in the Trump administration have claimed Iran’s military has been “decimated.” However, military intelligence agency reports have revealed different story.
Iran has regained access to a majority of its missile sites, including 30 out of the 33 located along the Strait of Hormuz, per The New York Times.
Senior officials told the outlet this kind of capability could cause serious damage to U.S. vessels in the strait.
“People with knowledge of the assessments said they show — to varying degrees, depending on the level of damage incurred at the different sites — that the Iranians can use mobile launchers that are inside the sites to move missiles to other locations,” according to the report. “In some cases they can launch missiles directly from launchpads that are part of the facilities.”
Iran has access to 70% of mobile missile launchers and has held onto 70% of its ballistic and cruise missiles throughout the conflict. Iran also regained access to ninety percent of its underground facilities, used to store and launch missiles, which are now “partially or fully operational,” those familiar with the intelligence assessments said.
The assessments contradict statements made by Trump administration officials about the war. Trump has claimed the U.S. has “won” the war.
This includes a claim made in an April that Iran’s “rocket launchers are being blown to pieces, very few of them left.”
“Never in the history of warfare has an enemy suffered such clear and devastating large-scale losses in a matter of weeks,” Trump said.
The outlet reported Hegseth’s statements made at an April press conference, where he asserted Operation Epic Fury had “decimated Iran’s military and rendered it combat-ineffective for years to come” were allegedly not true.
“The intelligence describing Iran’s remaining military capacity is dated less than a month after that news conference,” the report reads.
White House spokeswoman Olivia Wales said the assessments that Iran’s military had been “crushed,” echoing Trump’s claim in March that Iran had “nothing left in a military sense.”
Wales said that the Iranian government knew that its “current reality is not sustainable” and that anyone who “thinks Iran has reconstituted its military is either delusional or a mouthpiece” for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
Acting Pentagon press secretary Joel Valdez called out the press he responded.
“It is so disgraceful that The New York Times and others are acting as public relations agents for the Iranian regime in order to paint Operation Epic Fury as anything other than a historic accomplishment,” he said in a statement.
Iran’s strong and ongoing military capability could pose a potential problem for the U.S. if hostilities resumed, The Times claimed.
The Pentagon has used a staggering amount of its weapons cache in the war with Iran, spending millions and blowing through a large chunk of its stockpile.
“We have executed multiple successful operations across combatant commands while ensuring the U.S. military possesses a deep arsenal of capabilities to protect our people and our interests,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement to The Times.
