U.S. armed forces have eliminated Iranian navy presence in the Hormuz Straits and the Arabian Gulf, destroying 17 vessels as part of nearly 2,000 targets struck during Operation Epic Fury, the general in charge of it said on Tuesday.
One of the vessels neutralized was “the most operational Iranian submarine, that now has a hole in its side,” Admiral Brad Cooper, the commander of United States Central Command (CENTCOM) said in a filmed update on the fourth day of the joint operation with Israel against Iran, which is codenamed Roaring Lion in Israel.
U.S. War Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Wednesday that a U.S. submarine had torpedoed an Iranian warship near Sri Lanka. Officials from there said an Iranian vessel with a crew of 180 sank near the coast, with only 30 rescued, the New York Times reported.
The Iranian ship “thought it was safe in international waters,” but “instead, it was sunk by a torpedo,” Hegseth said at a Pentagon briefing.
“More than 50,000 troops, 200 fighters, two aircraft carriers, and bombers from the United States are participating in this operation, and more capability is on the way. These forces bring a massive amount of firepower, representing the largest buildup by the US in the Middle East in a generation,” Cooper said.
The effort aimed at “sinking the Iranian Navy, the entire Navy,” as Cooper put it, has military and geostrategic significance as Iran on Tuesday said it would close the Hormuz Strait. Among other disruptions, this would suspend direct maritime export of petrol from the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, and Kuwait to major consumers like India and China, driving up prices.
A top navy commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said on Wednesday on Iran’s Fars news agency that Iran still controls the Strait, which it said on Tuesday was closed for traffic.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that the U.S. Navy was ready to escort oil tankers through the crucial Gulf shipping route.
“For decades, the Iranian regime has harassed international shipping. Today, there’s not a single Iranian ship underway in the Arabian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz, or Gulf of Oman, and we will not stop,” Cooper said.
In addition to the push against Iran’s naval capabilities, “we’re focused on shooting all the things that can shoot at us,” Cooper said, adding this was the “simple terms” gist of the military focus.
U.S. naval forces have “deployed multiple waves of cruise missiles,
obliterating Iranian command and control and air defense capabilities from two aircraft carrier strike groups,” Cooper updated. “We’re squeezing Iran from the sea and have them backed into their own ports. U.S. air forces are doing what they do best, executing a high volume of air strikes right into Iran.”
The pummeling has “severely degraded Iran’s air defenses and destroyed hundreds of Iran’s ballistic missiles, launchers, and drones,” he said. “Our B-2 bombers and B-1 bombers have executed uncontested surgical strikes against multiple missile facilities deep inside Iran. And then just last night, a B-52 bomber force struck ballistic missile and command and control posts,” he said.
Cooper noted Israel’s role in the mission, saying: “In the opening hours of Operation Epic Fury, U.S. Central Command forces together with Israel delivered overwhelming and unprecedented strikes into Iran.” Operationally, “the two most powerful air forces in the world, the U.S. and Israel, are dominating the skies over the world’s largest state sponsor of terror,” he added.
Cooper said that another focus of the operation is to take out Iran’s missile launchers, which it has used to fire hundreds of rockets into Israel since Saturday, and also into Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Iraq, Jordan, Oman, and Cyprus.
The Iranian regime “has launched over 500 ballistic missiles and over 2,000 drones,” Cooper said, “indiscriminately targeting civilians as they launched these missiles and drones,” adding: “You’ve seen it on TV. The evidence is crystal clear and overwhelming.”
U.S. forces ”will continue to conduct dynamic targeting operations. We’re hunting Iran’s last remaining mobile ballistic missile launchers to eliminate what I would characterize as their lingering launch capability,” Cooper said.
The “shock and awe” strikes of 2003 in Iraq were about half the scale of the first 24 hours of the current operation, Cooper said. “We continue with 24/7 strikes into Iran from seabed to space and cyerspace,” he added. Less than 100 hours into the operation, “we’ve already struck nearly 2,000 targets with more than 2,000 munitions.”
Cooper highlighted two firsts: The U.S. Army’s firing of “long range precision strike missiles called Prisms in combat, providing an unrivaled deep strike capability,” and CENTCOM’s deployment of a drone task force called Task Force Scorpion Strike. It “launched countless one-way attack drones, achieving massive effects.”
The drones used, he added, “were originally an Iranian design. We took them back to America, made them better, and fired them right back at Iran.”
At the start of his speech, Cooper acknowledged the six “Americans who’ve been killed in action,” and extended “prayers for a speedy recovery to the wounded.” The operation is aimed at eliminating “Iran’s ability to threaten Americans as they’ve been doing for nearly half a century.” Cooper said he could “not be prouder of America’s sons and daughters in uniform who are answering the call.”
Iran’s ability to hit “us and our partners is declining while our combat power on the other hand is building,” Cooper said. His overall operational assessment, he said, “is that we are ahead of our game plan. Along the way, every single branch of our military is achieving unprecedented success.”
