WASHINGTON — The United States military has struck more than 7,000 targets inside Iran, destroyed all 11 of its submarines, wiped out its air defense network and is now flying combat aircraft directly over Iranian territory — a dramatic accounting of the war's scope delivered by the Pentagon's top officials in a briefing that underscored just how comprehensively the Trump administration believes it has reshaped the Iranian military threat.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and General Caine outlined the operation in terms that brooked little ambiguity: this is not, they insisted, the kind of grinding, inconclusive conflict that defined America's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This one, they said, was different by design.
'Overwhelming Force Applied With Precision'
The numbers Hegseth cited were sweeping in scope. U.S. forces have struck over 7,000 targets across Iran's military infrastructure since the war began — a figure he described not as incremental but as a deliberate application of maximum force. The result, he said, has been a 90% reduction in ballistic missile and one-way kamikaze drone attacks against U.S. forces in the region.
"To date we've struck over 7,000 targets across Iran and its military infrastructure — that is not incremental, that is overwhelming force applied with precision," Hegseth told reporters. "Iran's air defenses [are] flattened. Iran's defense industrial base — the factories, the production lines that feed their missile and drone programs — [are] being overwhelmingly destroyed."
Iran's defense industrial base, the manufacturing backbone that fed its missile and drone arsenal, has been a particular focus of the campaign. Factories and production lines across the country have been targeted and, the Pentagon says, largely eliminated.
The Navy That No Longer Exists
Perhaps the most striking claim in the briefing concerned Iran's naval forces. The Iranian Navy, once comprising 11 submarines and a significant surface fleet, has been rendered effectively inoperable. More than 120 Iranian Navy ships have been damaged or sunk. Every submarine Iran possessed is now gone.
"We've decided to share the ocean with Iran — we've given them the bottom half," Hegseth said. "We've damaged or sunk over 120 of their Navy ships. Their submarines — they once had 11 — are gone. Their military ports are crippled."
It was a remarkable statement, delivered with a bluntness that reflected the administration's broader posture: this war is being prosecuted with a speed and ferocity that previous administrations, in their estimation, lacked the will to match.
From Standoff to Stand-In: A Shift in How the War Is Being Fought
General Caine described a significant evolution in tactics as the campaign has matured. In the early days of the conflict, the U.S. relied primarily on standoff weapons — munitions launched from a safe distance. Now, he said, American aircraft are operating directly over Iranian airspace in what he called a shift to "stand-in" combat.
"We're more stand-in — meaning we're over the top, even further in — and we have even more of an exact sense of what we're striking and why," Caine said. "Even more dynamically — meaning because the intelligence improved, we're able to more quickly identify targets before it strikes or right after it shoots."
The shift has allowed U.S. forces to strike targets as they emerge from underground facilities in real time, improving both precision and responsiveness in a conflict where Iran has increasingly relied on hardened, subterranean infrastructure to protect its remaining assets.
To penetrate those facilities, the U.S. has deployed some of the most powerful conventional weapons in its arsenal. Five-thousand-pound penetrator bombs — purpose-built to bore through reinforced concrete and solid rock before detonating — have been dropped on underground storage sites housing Iranian missiles and command centers.
"These weapons are bespokely designed to get through concrete and/or rocks and function after penetrating those barriers," Caine said.
A $200 Billion Bill — and a Fight Over Who Pays
The scale of the operation has come with a price tag to match. The Pentagon has sent a $200 billion war supplemental request to Congress to fund ongoing operations and replenish munitions stockpiles that were drawn down significantly during the Biden administration's support for Ukraine.
Hegseth did not shy away from the figure — or from the political argument embedded in it. "It takes money to kill bad guys," he said, adding that the administration was returning to Congress to ensure it was "properly funded for what's been done and for what we may have to do in the future."
He also seized the moment to relitigate a grievance that has become a fixture of Trump-era defense policy, arguing that the depleted stockpiles now being replenished are the direct result of weapons sent to Ukraine under his predecessor. "We're also still dealing with the environment that Joe Biden created — which was depleting those stockpiles and not sending them to our own military, but to Ukraine," Hegseth said.
Gulf States Hold. The Endgame Comes Into Focus
Despite the region-wide tensions that the conflict has generated, the Gulf States — Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait — have remained aligned with the U.S. and Israel, providing logistical support and maintaining the regional coalition that has helped contain Iranian retaliation.
The strategic objective, as Hegseth framed it, is unambiguous and total: Iran must never acquire a nuclear weapon, and the military and proxy infrastructure that has allowed it to threaten its neighbors and U.S. forces across the Middle East must be permanently dismantled.
"This is not those wars," Hegseth said, in a pointed reference to Iraq and Afghanistan. "President Trump knows better. Operation Epic Fury is different — it's laser focused, it's decisive. Our objectives, given directly from our America First president, remain exactly what they were on day one: destroy missiles, launchers and Iran's defense industrial base. And Iran never gets a nuclear weapon."
Whether the campaign has achieved the irreversible damage the Pentagon claims — or whether Iran retains more capacity than officials are acknowledging — remains difficult to verify independently. What is clear is that the Trump administration has staked its credibility on the assertion that this war, unlike its predecessors, will end on its own terms.
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