March 13 (UPI) — Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth downplayed the shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz during a press briefing Friday and claimed 15,000 Iranian targets have been struck.
Hegseth said the U.S. and Israeli air forces are flying over Iran and Tehran Friday, the 13th day of the operation. He claimed that Iran’s air defenses, navy and munitions supply have been defeated.
Iran’s missile volume was down by 90% and its one-way attack drones were down by 95% on Thursday, Hegseth said.
“Today as we speak we fly over the top of Iran and Tehran,” Hegseth said. “Fighters and bombers, all day picking targets as they choose.”
The defense secretary opened Friday’s briefing at the Pentagon, joined again by Gen. Dan Caine, saying that the United States is “decimating the radical Iranian regime’s military in a way the world has never seen before.”
“We said it would not be a fair fight and it has not been,” he said.
Caine lauded the use of the first precision-strike missiles used in combat by the United States, praising the troops that fired them. One of those soldiers was 20 years old and has only been in the U.S. Army for six months.
Caine’s comments on the precision of U.S. strikes come as the military is investigating a deadly strike on an elementary school for girls in Iran that took place on Feb. 28. The preliminary investigation has found that the United States is likely responsible for the attack that killed more than 170 people, most of them children.
“They’ve done all of this with the precision and determination that comes from relentless training and trust in each other and their weapons systems,” Caine said.
Hegseth said the United States is “dealing with” Iran’s attacks on vessels on the Strait of Hormuz, which has dramatically disrupted the oil trade.
“It’s something we’re dealing with, we have been dealing with it and don’t need to worry about it,” Hegseth said. “We’re on plan to defeat, destroy and disable all of their meaningful military capabilities on a pace the world has never seen before.”
Caine later said that there is some traffic moving through the strait.
As Iran’s military capabilities weaken, Hegseth said, more importantly, it does not possess the capability to build more weapons.
“Soon and very soon all of Iran’s defense companies will be destroyed,” Hegseth. “For example, as of two days ago, all of Iran’s ballistic missile production capacity, every company that builds every component of those missiles, has been functionally defeated, destroyed.”
As for Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, Hegseth said he is “likely disfigured.” Khamenei was wounded during the initial strikes by the United States and Israel on Tehran on Feb. 28, which killed his father, former supreme leader Ali Khamenei.
President Donald Trump shared similar speculation about the new supreme leader on Fox News on Friday, saying he believes he is alive but “damaged.”
“I think he probably is,” Trump said. “I think he’s damaged but I think he’s probably alive in some form.”
