ISLAMABAD: President Donald Trump declared Monday that US strikes have wiped out Iran's navy, air force, anti-aircraft systems, radar, and military leadership. He called the conflict "a skirmish" and said Tehran never had a chance.
Trump was speaking to the media after signing a memorandum in the Oval Office to reinstate a presidential fitness award for children. He was joined by Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
"They [Iran] have no navy, totally wiped out. They have no air force, totally wiped out. They have no anti-aircraft capability, totally wiped out. No radar. They have no leaders – the leaders are wiped out," Trump said.
He said Iran's fleet of 159 ships has been reduced to "little boats with a machine gun on the front – every little ship at the bottom of the sea."
Iranian state media has previously rejected similar US military assessments. The Tehran Times earlier reported that the IRGC Navy seized two vessels (the MSC Francesca and the Epaminondas) in late April for what it called "maritime violations," presenting the interdictions as evidence of continued Iranian naval capacity.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei had previously called US claims of successful merchant transits through the strait "baseless and outright false," saying commercial traffic had collapsed by more than 95% since hostilities began on Feb. 28, according to Tasnim News Agency.
Speaking about Iran's nuclear program, Trump said a US B-2 bomber strike destroyed Tehran's nuclear facilities before it could develop a weapon. "They would have had a nuclear weapon within two weeks," he said. "We blew up their nuclear potential – it was obliterated."
Iranian officials had previously acknowledged damage to facilities at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan while denying that the program had been neutralized. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Iran's nuclear rights as a Non-Proliferation Treaty signatory were "inalienable" and could not be eliminated by aerial bombardment, according to Iranian news agency IRNA.
In the Oval Office interaction with the media, President Trump said, "We can't let Iran have nuclear weapons. You can't let a bunch of lunatics have nuclear weapons or the world would be in trouble."
He said the consequences of inaction would have been catastrophic. "The Middle East would have been gone. Israel would have been gone. They would have trained their sights on Europe first, and then us," he said.
Trump also claimed credit for ending eight armed conflicts, including what he described as a near-nuclear war between India and Pakistan. "I ended eight wars – nobody else ever ended a war," he said.
He also cited the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize recipient María Machado, recounting her as saying that the US president was more deserving of the prize than she was.
"She said, 'I don't deserve this – President Trump deserves it. There's never been a man that deserves it more,'" Trump said.
"We are doing well," he said.
