The claims come from public remarks by senior U.S. officials at the Pentagon and by Israeli military statements, as Washington and Tehran move from fighting toward talks. In a detailed accounting, Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, described how the U.S. military has assessed damage across Iran’s air defenses, naval forces and military production sites.
Caine told reporters that the U.S. has hit more than 13,000 targets. He said the strikes degraded Iran’s ability to defend itself, listing large percentages of attacks or destruction across categories including air defenses, ballistic missile storage facilities and one-way attack drone storage facilities.
On air defenses, Caine said the U.S. struck more than 1,500 air defense targets and storage facilities including more than 450 ballistic missile storage sites and 800 one-way attack drone storage facilities. He told reporters, “All of these systems are gone.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth went further in saying, “Iran no longer has an air defense,” and that “we own their skies,” though he later conceded that Iran “can still shoot — we know that,” elaborating that Iran may “have a system here or there” but no longer has an air defense system “capable of defending their skies.”
The officials did not describe what the remaining air defenses are or where the capability is concentrated. Caine also did not provide new details about the weapon used in an incident in which an Iranian strike shot down a U.S. F-15E Strike Eagle last week. The episode was the first time an American military jet was shot down during the war, showing, according to the reporting, that Tehran still retains some ability to strike back despite Trump administration claims.
In the naval category, Caine said the military sank much of Iran’s fleet and that 150 Iranian ships “are at the bottom of the ocean.” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt described Iran’s navy in stronger terms, telling reporters it was “completely annihilated.” Caine’s assessment, however, distinguished between Iran’s regular navy and Revolutionary Guard forces, saying that only half of the Revolutionary Guard’s small attack boats—the vessels used to swarm warships and harass traffic in the Strait of Hormuz—had been sunk.
Caine also said that after more than 700 strikes, the military believed it had destroyed more than 95% of Iran’s naval mines. The reporting notes that because the U.S. has not said how large Iran’s mine stockpile was before the war, it is not possible to know how many mines remain. It also describes how Iranian-linked outlets published a chart saying the Revolutionary Guard had placed mines in the Strait of Hormuz during the war, while analysts cited in the report said they had seen no change in merchant traffic through the strait since a ceasefire began this week.
For weapons production, Caine said the U.S. and allies attacked “approximately 90%” of Iran’s weapons factories and that “destroyed Iran’s defense industrial base.” He said nearly 80% of Iran’s nuclear industrial base was hit, which he said further degraded efforts to obtain a nuclear weapon. The reporting says that while Caine pointed to some components Iran could not produce—like solid rocket motors—he stopped short of saying Iran could not rebuild or obtain weapons through other routes, and stopped short of saying the attacked factories had been fully destroyed or rendered unusable. Trump, the report says, warned countries against arming Iran during the same period.
Israel’s military, meanwhile, pointed to its own air-defense performance. The report says Israeli leaders cited an interception rate of more than 90% through aerial defense systems, crediting the approach with preventing serious damage and casualties. The reporting describes Israel’s system as detecting incoming fire and deploying defenses when it determines a projectile is headed toward a population center or sensitive infrastructure, while also saying it is not 100% guaranteed.
The U.S. and Israel’s detailed damage assessments arrive as the ceasefire moves the conflict toward diplomacy, including talks expected to be held in Pakistan. The reporting characterizes parts of the exchange—such as mine and strait activity—as having the potential to pressure negotiations, even as independent tracking cited in the report found Iranian strikes continued at a relatively steady pace from Feb. 28 through Wednesday.