Iran has spent 40 years threatening to wipe Israel off the map and drive America out of the Middle East.
Now America has sunk over 30 of their ships in less than a week.
And Thursday, Pete Hegseth stood at CENTCOM headquarters in Tampa and delivered a message Iran's mullahs desperately don't want to hear.
Operation Epic Fury Destroys Over 30 Iranian Ships and Cuts Missile Attacks 90 Percent
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and CENTCOM Commander Adm. Brad Cooper faced reporters side by side at MacDill Air Force Base, and the numbers they put on the board were staggering.
Over 30 Iranian ships destroyed or sunk – surpassing even what President Trump announced just hours earlier.
In the hour before the press conference, U.S. B-2 stealth bombers dropped dozens of 2,000-pound penetrator bombs on deeply buried ballistic missile launchers.
And Cooper dropped the detail that stopped the room: in just the last few hours, U.S. forces struck an Iranian drone carrier ship roughly the size of a World War II aircraft carrier – and as he was speaking, it was still on fire.
That's not a military setback for Iran.
That's the annihilation of a navy.
Ballistic missile attacks against U.S. forces and partners have collapsed 90% since day one of the operation.
Iranian drone attacks are down 83%.
The regime that spent decades perfecting its "swarm" strategy – flooding the region with cheap drones and missiles to bleed American allies – is now effectively shooting blanks.
Pete Hegseth Says Iran Missile Production Is the Next Target
Here's what your mainstream media outlet won't tell you: the naval destruction is the opening act.
Trump gave CENTCOM a second task – one Cooper described Thursday as razing and leveling Iran's entire ballistic missile industrial base.
"We're not just hitting what they have," Cooper told reporters. "We're destroying their ability to rebuild."
This is the strategic shift that matters.
For 38 years, every American confrontation with Iran ended the same way – Tehran took its lumps, licked its wounds, and rebuilt.
In 1988, President Reagan launched Operation Praying Mantis after an Iranian mine nearly sank the USS Samuel B. Roberts – and U.S. forces obliterated half of Iran's operational navy in a single day.
Iran spent the next decade quietly rebuilding.
Trump just told his generals that can never happen again.
B-2 bombers are now targeting the factories, the supply chains, and the production infrastructure – the entire ecosystem Iran needs to manufacture the missiles it has used to terrorize its neighbors and threaten American troops for a generation.
Hegseth made the stakes explicit: "The amount of combat power that's still flowing, that's still coming, that we'll be able to project over Iran is multiples of what it currently is right now."
Multiples.
What America has already done – 30-plus ships, nearly 200 targets struck in the last 72 hours, total air dominance over Iranian skies – is not the peak of this operation.
It's the floor.
House Votes Once Again to Call Iran a Terror Sponsor
While Hegseth and Cooper were briefing the nation on American victories, the House voted once again 372–53 to reaffirm that Iran is the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism.
Here's the part that should make your blood boil: three years ago, when Joe Biden was in the White House, Congress passed a nearly identical resolution 420–1.
Iran didn't change between 2023 and 2026.
Karoline Leavitt noted that administrations of both parties have held the same position on Iran as a terror sponsor since 1984.
Cooper noted Thursday that Iran's chaotic retaliation – firing wildly at partners across the region – has actually pushed those countries deeper into the American orbit.
Iran's insurance policy became its indictment.
Hegseth was direct about what Iran was counting on: "Iran is hoping that we cannot sustain this, which is a really bad miscalculation."
Sources:
- Just the News Staff, "Secretary of War Hegseth and CENTCOM Commander Cooper provide update on Operation Epic Fury," Just the News, March 6, 2026.
- Greg Wehner, "Operation Epic Fury destroys Iran's navy and cuts missile attacks by 90% in ongoing campaign," Fox News, March 5, 2026.
- Fox News Staff, "53 Dems vote against declaring Iran a state sponsor of terror," Fox News, March 6, 2026.
- Just the News Staff, "53 Dems vote against resolution affirming Iran's status as largest state sponsor of terror," Just the News, March 6, 2026.
- C. Todd Lopez, "Hegseth says 'Epic Fury' goals in Iran are 'laser-focused,'" U.S. Army, March 3, 2026.
- GlobalSecurity.org, "Hegseth Says There's No Shortage of American Will, Resources in Operation Epic Fury," March 5, 2026.
