Classified U.S. intelligence assessments show that Iran has regained access to most of its missile sites, launchers and underground facilities, contradicting public claims by President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that the Iranian military has been “decimated,” according to a new report from The New York Times.

The assessments indicate Iran has restored operational access to 30 of the 33 missile sites it maintains along the Strait of Hormuz, putting American warships and oil tankers transiting the waterway at renewed risk. Only three sites remain entirely inaccessible.

Iran still fields roughly 70 percent of its mobile launchers nationwide and has retained about 70 percent of its prewar missile stockpile, including both ballistic and cruise missiles, according to the assessments. Military intelligence agencies, drawing on satellite imagery and other surveillance, also concluded that Iran has regained access to about 90 percent of its underground missile storage and launch facilities, which are now assessed as “partially or fully operational.”

The findings are dated less than a month after Hegseth declared at an April 8 Pentagon news conference that Operation Epic Fury, the joint U.S.-Israeli campaign launched Feb. 28, had “decimated Iran’s military and rendered it combat-ineffective for years to come.” Trump told CBS News on March 9 that Iran’s “missiles are down to a scatter” and that the country had “nothing left in a military sense.”

Asked about the assessments, White House spokeswoman Olivia Wales repeated that Iran’s military had been “crushed” and said anyone claiming otherwise was “either delusional or a mouthpiece” for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. Trump posted on social media Tuesday that it was “virtual treason” to suggest Iran’s military was doing well.

Acting Pentagon press secretary Joel Valdez accused news outlets of “acting as public relations agents for the Iranian regime.”

The assessments highlight the dilemma facing Trump if the month-old cease-fire collapses. The U.S. military has already depleted stocks of Tomahawk cruise missiles, Patriot interceptors, and Precision Strike and ATACMS missiles. The U.S. expended roughly 1,100 long-range stealth cruise missiles during the war, close to the entire remaining American stockpile, along with more than 1,000 Tomahawks and over 1,300 Patriot interceptors.

When striking Iran’s hardened facilities, Pentagon planners opted to seal off entrances rather than destroy entire sites, in part to preserve bunker-busting munitions for potential operations against North Korea and China, officials said.
Lockheed Martin currently produces about 650 Patriot interceptors annually and has announced plans to scale to 2,000. Officials said replenishing depleted stockpiles will take years.

Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a House appropriations subcommittee Tuesday that the military has “sufficient munitions for what we’re tasked to do right now.” Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said the U.S. military “possesses a deep arsenal of capabilities to protect our people and our interests.”

U.S. Central Command said Sunday that more than 20 American warships were enforcing the blockade against Iran in the Strait of Hormuz, which carries roughly a fifth of the world’s daily oil consumption.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)