Trump Hasn’t Actually Wrecked as Much of Iran’s Military as He Claims

President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed to have obliterated Iran’s navy and air force—but it seems that Iran has maintained far more military capabilities than his administration is willing to let on.Last week, Trump claimed that Iran’s navy was “laying at the bottom of the sea, completely obliterated,” with the exception of a fleet of “fast attack ships” that the U.S. military did not consider a threat. However, multiple U.S. officials told CBS News Wednesday that roughly 60 percent of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’s naval arm still existed. In fact, several ships in the Strait of Hormuz were attacked by Iranian gunboats Wednesday. That’s not all. Roughly two-thirds of the Iranian air force is still believed to be operational, U.S. officials told CBS News. Nearly half of Iran’s stockpile of ballistic missiles and associated launch systems was also still intact at the beginning of the ceasefire in early April, three U.S. officials told the outlet. Two weeks ago, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declared that “Iran no longer has any sort of comprehensive air defense” capability.The Pentagon’s internal intelligence agency recently told lawmakers that Iran still maintained significant military capability, including thousands of missiles and one-way attack drones, NBC News reported Wednesday. In a post on X Wednesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt dismissed CBS’s reporting as propaganda, before spouting some of the adminstration’s own. “The truth is that under President Trump’s leadership, the U.S. military decimated the Iranian regime’s capabilities in just 38 days,” she wrote.