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.
Navy Adm. Brad Cooper, Centcom commander, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee today in Washington as part of hearings related to force posture in the region and the command's portion of the fiscal year 2027 presidential budget request. The conversation on Capitol Hill focused largely on the successes of Operation Epic Fury.
"In less than 40 days, Centcom forces achieved our military objectives," 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, 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% of its defense industrial base destroyed, Iran won't be able to reconstitute those weapons for years."
President Donald J. Trump and other administration officials have stated that the Iranians will never have a nuclear weapon. So, military objectives as part of Epic Fury were designed to support that, 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, Cooper said.
"The defense industrial base for their drones and their missiles in their navy were degraded by 90%; they have about 10% left," he told lawmakers. "My military assessment would be that the [Iranian] navy will not begin to rebuild for five to 10 years."
Iran has been a direct threat, but it's also been an indirect threat, acting as a patron for terrorist proxies that carried out violence benefiting Iranian interests. That threat has been diminished greatly, Cooper said.
We 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."
Cooper told lawmakers that, as of now, no resources or equipment are flowing from Iran to terrorist proxies. Centcom works with partners in the region regularly on shared security goals. The onset of Epic Fury revealed just how good some of those partners are, Cooper said, adding that the operation has been a benefit to those military relationships.
"In terms of our partners, I think a key feature is we have enhanced [military] relationships across the board in the Middle East," he said. "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."
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."