Despite weeks of intense airstrikes by the US and Israeli forces on its territory, Iran seems to have retained thousands of missiles and kamikaze drones, according to a new intelligence assessment, which contradicts the Trump administration’s chest-thumping declarations of victory in the conflict in the Middle East.
Even before the ceasefire was declared, US President Donald Trump and his defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, had claimed the Iranian Air Force was “wiped out” and the Navy was “at the bottom of the sea”.
According to a report by Business Insider, Marine Corps Lieutenant General James Adams, director of the Defence Intelligence Agency, has said that Tehran still has “thousands” of missiles and one-way attack drones, posing a continued threat to US bases and its allies in the Middle East.
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Adams made the declaration during a testimony before the House Armed Services Committee last week. According to the US official, Tehran managed to retain the munitions “despite degradations to its capabilities from both attrition and expenditure”.
The remarks add to last week’s CNN investigation, which found that roughly half of Iran’s missile launchers are still intact and thousands of one-way attack drones are retained in the arsenal despite the daily pounding by US and Israeli strikes for over five weeks.
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According to the report, a large percentage of Iran’s coastal defence cruise missiles were also intact, a claim consistent with the US not focusing its air campaign on coastal military assets, though they have been hitting ships. Those missiles serve as a key capability allowing Iran to threaten shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz.
“They are still very much poised to wreak absolute havoc throughout the entire region,” one source told CNN.
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US Claims On Iranian Damages
On April 1, Trump said Iran’s “ability to launch missiles and drones is dramatically curtailed, and their weapons factories and rocket launchers are being blown to pieces, very few of them left.”
Since February 28, US and Israeli forces have carried out thousands of airstrikes over Iran under Operation Epic Fury. US Air Force General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on April 8, said that the US military struck more than 450 Iranian ballistic missile storage facilities and 800 one-way attack drone storage facilities.
“All of these systems are gone,” he said.
US officials have also claimed that Tehran no longer has the industrial infrastructure to build missiles, launchers, or drones.