Pete Hegseth’s chest-thumping claims on the Iran war paint a different image of the scenes on the ground.
Data from the U.S. military show that the pace of operations in Iran has been fluctuating since President Donald Trump waged war, contrary to the defense secretary’s bombastic claims of “more and larger waves” of strikes in his press conferences, according to an analysis by CNN.
Every few days, the U.S. Central Command releases data showing the number of targets struck, which helps illustrate the average number of strikes per day. The figures show that strikes have risen and fallen over time, even as Hegseth, 45, regularly vows to hit Iran harder than before.
Data released by CENTCOM on March 9 and 12 showed that targets struck increased by roughly 1,000, amounting to an average of about 333 strikes per day.
But in the middle of that period, on March 10, Hegseth announced that “Today will be yet again our most intense day of strikes inside Iran: the most fighters, the most bombers, the most strikes, intelligence more refined and better than ever.”
On March 13, Hegseth again claimed that “Today will be yet again the highest volume of strikes that America has put over the skies of Iran and Tehran… ramping up and only up.” CENTCOM numbers from March 12 to 16, however, showed that the U.S. averaged roughly 250 strikes per day over that period.
The number of strikes peaked on Feb. 28, the first day of the war, when CENTCOM reported that more than 1,000 targets were hit. Other high points include March 3, when targets struck rose to 450 from 250 the day before. An average of 666 targets per day were hit from March 6 to 9, up from 433 between March 3 and 6.
The Pentagon did not immediately return a request for comment from the Daily Beast on Saturday. A Defense Department official told CNN, “As the Secretary and Admiral [Brad] Cooper have said, the Department of War continues to intensify our operations against military targets in Iran.”
Hegseth isn’t the only administration official making big claims about the war.
On Thursday, Trump, 79, told reporters in the Oval Office that the U.S. had obliterated Iran’s defenses.
“Their navy is gone, their air force is gone, their anti-aircraft equipment is gone. We’re flying wherever we want,” the commander in chief said. “We have nobody even shooting at us.”
On that same day, a U.S. F-35 fighter jet was forced to make an emergency landing at an air base in the Middle East after it was hit by what is believed to be Iranian fire, sources told CNN.
