The U.S. launched Operation Epic Fury in late February, and since then, American military forces in the U.S. Central Command area of operations have crippled Iran's military and its ability to project power, according to War Department leaders. The operation also highlighted military partners in the region.
That was what Navy Admiral Brad Cooper, commander of the US. Central Command or CENTCOM, told the Senate Armed Services Committee May 14 during hearings in Washington.
In less than 40 days, CENTCOM forces achieved our military objectives," Admiral Cooper said. "Most notably, we degraded Iran's ability to project power outside its borders and threaten the region and threaten our interests."
In April and October of last year, Iran rained hundreds of missiles down over Israel, Admiral Cooper reminded lawmakers. But Iran no longer has that ability after U.S. forces effectively eliminated its conventional missile capacity.
"Today, Iran can no longer attack with that mass and scale," he said. "And further, with 90 percent of its defense industrial base destroyed, Iran won't be able to reconstitute those weapons for years."
The U.S. watched Iran spend decades and billions of dollars arming proxies, he said, adding that Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis have been cut off from Iran's weapons supply and support because of the operation.
"This result was not foreordained, nor was it brought by chance," he said. "It's the culmination of months of careful planning built upon decades of experience." Admiral Cooper told lawmakers that, as of now, no resources or equipment are flowing from Iran to terrorist proxies.
"In terms of our partners, I think a key feature is we have enhanced [military] relationships across the board in the Middle East," said the CENTCOM commander. "As we sit here right now, we have five specific partner nations who are not just conceptually side by side, but literally side by side with the United States in defense."
Admiral Cooper called out the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia as exceptional partners.
"Over the course of Epic Fury, they've defended themselves, and they defended Americans," Cooper said. "In addition to those key allies, everything that we've accomplished would have been impossible without the Kingdom of Jordan, and clearly, we were operating very closely with the state of Israel."
President Donald Trump has stated that the Iranians will never have a nuclear weapon. The military objectives as part of Epic Fury were designed to support that end, including degrading Iran's ballistic missile capability and its navy, while also destroying the ability of the Iranian industrial base to reconstitute any of it. All of that has been achieved through Epic Fury.