CENTCOM commander Adm. Brad Cooper on Thursday also told reporters that drone attacks have decreased by 83 percent, and the United States has sunk at least 30 Iranian ships
Iranian ballistic missile attacks have decreased by 90 percent and drone attacks from the Islamic Republic dropped by 83 percent since the United States and Israel began their joint campaign against the regime early Saturday, according to U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) head Adm. Brad Cooper, who added at a Thursday press conference that the United States has sunk more than 30 Iranian ships.
U.S. bombers have hit nearly 200 targets “deep inside of Iran” in the past 72 hours alone, including a late afternoon strike that downed a massive Iranian drone carrier, Cooper said at CENTCOM headquarters in Tampa. He added that U.S. forces over the weekend “relentlessly destroyed Iran’s air defenses.”
“U.S. combat power is building as Iranian combat power declines,” Cooper said, noting that more than 50,000 soldiers have been involved in the historic military effort. “Our air dominance allows us to hit Iran’s center of gravity with overwhelming power.”
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth told reporters that the “amount of firepower over Iran and over Tehran is about to surge dramatically” in the coming days, which will include “more fighter squadrons” and the use of more offensive and defensive munitions.
The United States’ next wave of operations will focus on destroying Tehran’s ballistic missile capabilities far into the future.
“We’re not just hitting what they have,” Cooper said. “We’re destroying their ability to rebuild. And so as we transition to the next phase of this operation, we will systematically dismantle Iran’s missile production capability for the future, and that’s absolutely in progress.”
As part of the efforts to destroy Iran’s massive ballistic missile arsenal, the United States on Thursday dispatched B-2 bombers to drop “dozens of 2,000 pound penetrator bombs” on several “deeply buried ballistic missile launchers” across Iran, Cooper said. The United States launched similar operations against Iran’s Space Command compounds, which the regime has used to research long-range ballistic missile technology in hopes of developing a weapon that could strike the continental United States.
Hegseth, in his comments alongside Cooper, aimed to dispel any notion that the United States will soon run out of munitions.
“Iran is hoping that we cannot sustain this, which is a really bad miscalculation for the [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] in Iran,” Hegseth said. “We’ve got no shortage of munitions. Our stockpiles of defensive and offensive weapons allow us to sustain this campaign as long as we need to.”
“Our timeline,” Hegseth added, “is ours and ours alone to control, as long as it takes to ensure the United States of America achieves these objectives.”
U.S. forces have additionally targeted IRGC personnel and bases, including a day one strike on its central headquarters. “We’re targeting the headquarters and the people who are targeting the protesters,” Cooper said of the Iranian regime officials responsible for killing tens of thousands Iranian civilians who rose up against the Islamic Republic earlier this year.
