President Donald Trump offered a military scorecard on Iran at the Future Investment Initiative Summit, telling global investors and heads of state that the Islamic Republic’s entire naval fleet had been destroyed within just three days — and that its air force had been similarly wiped out without a single aircraft remaining operational.
“159 ships at the bottom of the sea in three days,” Trump said. “They have no navy. No air force. All wiped out.”
The remarks came near the close of his address, as Trump was responding to questions about the state of global competition and American strength — and used the opportunity to draw a sharp contrast between what he said mainstream media was reporting about the Iran campaign and the reality on the ground.
“If you read the New York Times, you would think we’re doing badly against Iran,” Trump said, expressing open contempt for the newspaper’s coverage. “It’s almost treasonous.”
He then proceeded to lay out what he described as the definitive military reality: Iran had no remaining navy, no functioning air force, very few missiles left, minimal drone capability, no factories left standing, and no living leadership to direct any remaining forces.
“Their leaders are all gone. The leaders are all dead. Nobody ever heard of the people that are left,” Trump said.
Earlier in his speech, Trump had provided granular detail about the naval destruction, describing a specific engagement in which an American attack submarine traveling at approximately 60 miles per hour had pursued and sunk the Iranian flagship vessel — named, he noted with obvious relish, the Salamani, after the general Trump had ordered killed in his first term.
“It caught them in about two minutes,” Trump recalled. “And that was the end of the Salamani.”
He also said all 22 of Iran’s mine-dropping vessels had been destroyed, joking that if Iran wanted to lay mines in international shipping lanes, they would have to do so by rowboat.
Trump described the overall campaign as a demonstration of American military technology and precision that the world had never previously witnessed, pointing in particular to the interception of 101 Iranian missiles — all traveling at 2,500 miles per hour — that had been launched at a US aircraft carrier. Every single missile was shot down, he said.
Trump used the military accounting to reinforce his broader argument that the Iran operation, far from being a reckless gamble, had been a precisely calculated and overwhelmingly successful mission that had permanently removed the most destabilizing force in the Middle East.
He said that with Iran’s military capacity eliminated, its nuclear facilities destroyed, and its leadership gone, the region could now move forward — and he called on Gulf nations present in the room to seize the moment by joining the Abraham Accords.
“The future of that region has never looked brighter,” Trump said…..See More
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