Trump and Hegseth Have Been Drastically Overstating Military Success in Iran: NYT Report

AP Photo/Alex Brandon

President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth drastically overestimated U.S. success in crippling Iran’s military capabilities, classified assessments show.

The president, his Department of Defense chief, and many others within the administration have repeatedly claimed that Iran’s military has been “decimated,” almost wholly crippled by U.S. strikes. Yet military intelligence agency reports and those with knowledge of them told a different story.

Iran has regained access to a majority of its missile sites, including thirty out of the thirty-three located along the Strait of Hormuz, according to a report from The New York Times. This capability, senior officials told the outlet, could cause serious damage to U.S. vessels passing through 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,” the report reads. “In some cases they can launch missiles directly from launchpads that are part of the facilities.”

The country has access to seventy percent of mobile missile launchers and has held onto seventy percent 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, dated from early May, strongly contradict statements made by Trump administration officials about the war in recent months. Trump has claimed on multiple occasions that the U.S. has “won” the war, including claiming in an April speech 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,” the president said.

The outlet also noted Hegseth’s declarations at an April press conference, where he claimed that Operation Epic Fury had “decimated Iran’s military and rendered it combat-ineffective for years to come.”

“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 claimed when asked about 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 chose to call out the press when asked by The Times about the assessments.

“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, in light of reporting that 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.

Over a thousand Precision Strike and ground-based missiles were deployed in the war, an amount that emptied the U.S. tranche to such an extent that congressional officials and Defense Department estimates showed concern. Munitions have been used to the point where bombs have had to be sent from Asian and European commands to accommodate U.S. needs, draining their own weapons supplies and, crucially, their surveillance capabilities.

“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.

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