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Fox News has claimed for months that Iran’s military had been destroyed. New reporting says US intelligence agencies have concluded otherwise.

Written by Helena Hind, Isabella Corrao, Jane Lee & Sophie Lawton

Published

Since the early stages of President Donald Trump's Iran war, Fox News personalities and guests have parroted his administration's assertions that Iran's military has been severely decimated or destroyed. Yet on May 12, The New York Times reported that those assertions are “sharply at odds with what U.S. intelligence agencies are telling policymakers behind closed doors” and that Iran has “restored operational access to 30 of the 33 missile sites it maintains along the Strait of Hormuz."

Liberal Fox host Jessica Tarlov was met with interruptions and deflections on May 13 after citing both the Times' reporting and an earlier Atlantic piece discussing Vice President JD Vance's concern about dwindling U.S. missile stockpiles. Co-host Jesse Watters dismissed the reporting as “deep state leaks.”

Fox continues to paint a rosy picture of U.S. efforts against Iran more than two months after the initial attack: Since the early days of the war, Fox News has pushed the Trump administration line that it has destroyed Iran’s military.

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  • March

    • Fox News contributor Kellyanne Conway: “They knew the intelligence that Iran would continue to enrich, that Iran would get closer to nuclear capability. What did he [Trump] do? He crippled their navy. He neutralized their missile capacity.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 3/4/26]
    • Retired Gen. Jack Keane, a Fox News analyst: “At day three, we wanted to have reduced their retaliation capability by 75% in terms of ballistic missiles, and we hit that mark, and now we're up to, as reported, 86%.” Keane added: “Their navy is essentially gone.” [Fox News, America's Newsroom, 3/4/26]
    • Fox News correspondent Jennifer Griffin: “Just 100 hours into this war, the U.S. military has nearly destroyed Iran's ability to fire ballistic missiles.” [Fox News, The Faulkner Focus, 3/4/26]
    • Fox News host Sean Hannity bragged about the US military: “Within 30 seconds, they took out the supreme leader and the top 40 leaders within Iran. They've taken out their ballistic missile sites, their air defense systems. We own the skies all over Iran. We've been sinking their ships left, right, and sideways.” He called it “the most shock and awe, you know,  successful military endeavors that we've ever seen in history.” [Premiere Radio Networks, The Sean Hannity Show, 3/4/26]
    • Fox & Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt: “The Iranians, their ballistic missile launches are down 86% since the first day and 23% in the last 24 hours.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 3/5/26]
    • Fox News correspondent Jacqui Heinrich: “Officials said yesterday the U.S. is very close to achieving complete dominance over Iran's airspace, hitting over 2,000 targets, with missile launches by Iran down 86% since day one of the operation.” [Fox News, America's Newsroom, 3/5/26]
    • The Five co-host Kayleigh McEnany remarked: “You noted the ballistic missile attacks coming from Iran down 90%. He said they have sunk 30 ships in the Iranian navy.” [Fox News, The Five, 3/5/26]
    • Fox News host Laura Ingraham: “Our military's primary objective — eliminating Iran's nuclear program, eliminating Iranian ballistic missiles and future production, and eliminating their interceptors, taking out their navy — well, I agree. All those objectives — I agree with Sen. Kennedy — Trump has already won in Iran.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 3/5/26]
    • Fox News political analyst Lisa Boothe: “It's worked well. You look at a 90% drop in the ballistic missiles that Iran has been able to send. You look at decapitating their navy as well as their leadership in quick order.” [Fox News, Outnumbered, 3/6/26]
    • Fox News host Will Cain: “So U.S. firepower surges and, correspondingly, Iran's destroyed.” He said: “Since day one, missile attacks from Iran are down 90%. Drone attacks down 83%. Eighty percent of Iran's air defense system destroyed and over 60% of its ballistic missile launchers, no more.” A graphic titled “U.S. devastates Tehran's military” also aired during the segment. [Fox News, The Will Cain Show, 3/6/26]
    • Fox News host Jesse Watters: “We're pretty fast approaching the point where there's not going to be much offensive capability left.” He continued: “Yesterday they fired only eight missiles. Eight, Jim. Eight. That's not going to cut it.” [Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, 3/6/26]
    • Fox News contributor Dan Hoffman said: “We've destroyed their ballistic missile and drone capabilities.” [Fox News, America Reports, 3/9/26]
    • Ellie Cohanim, former U.S. deputy envoy to combat antisemitism, claimed that Iran’s naval capacity “has been almost completely obliterated at this point.” [Fox News, The Story with Martha MacCallum, 3/9/26]
    • Ingraham: “Just a few days into Operation Epic Fury, it was obvious that America had already destroyed the core elements of Iran's nuclear and missile capability.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 3/9/26]
    • Fox chief political anchor Bret Baier reported that the U.S. military is “coming to the end” on its target list, and he noted that “Iran is 90% less as far as firing ballistic missiles, 83% less as far as firing drones, and they believe that capability as time goes on is diminishing.” [Fox News, America's Newsroom, 3/10/26]
    • The Five co-host Dana Perino: “What our military has been able to do, to degrade the possibility of the capacity of Iran to attack their neighbors and their own people, is quite extraordinary.” [Fox News, The Five, 3/10/26]
    • Fox News host Jesse Watters: “U.S. firepower's decimated Iranian stockpiles and now we're pivoting and hitting their defense industrial base.” Watters added: “The president telling Axios that the Air Force is running out of targets. There's practically nothing left to hit.” [Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, 3/11/26]
    • Ingraham: Iran “had so much destroyed. Their navy, missile capability.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 3/12/26]
    • Watters: “We've annihilated this entire country's missile program, for the most part. Their drones, their navy, their air force is gone.” [Fox News, The Five, 3/27/26]
    • Hannity: The U.S. military has “destroyed their navy, their air force, their missile defense systems, their missile launchers, their ballistic missile systems.” [Premiere Radio Networks, The Sean Hannity Show, 3/30/26]

  • April

    • Jack Keane: “It is remarkable the success that we've achieved against Iran’s arsenals that they had, huge ballistic missile arsenal, huge drone arsenal.” [Fox News, America Reports, 4/2/26]
    • Hannity: “They've been decimated, their army, their navy, pretty much their ballistic missile systems, their nuclear systems.” [Premiere Radio Networks, The Sean Hannity Show, 4/6/26]
    • Former National Security Council senior director Michael Allen said: “I do think it’s a success that we were able to substantially degrade their ballistic missile force. I know that critics of the president are trying to say, Well, you know, we didn't get all of it and they still retain drones and the rest. But this is important. We really have set them back years.” [Fox News, America's Newsroom, 4/8/26]
    • Will Cain: “Iran has lost its entire navy, air force, thousands of top military leaders, and scientists. Missile stockpiles destroyed. Launchers, factories, blown to smithereens.” [Fox News, The Will Cain Show, 4/8/26]
    • Fox News host Laura Ingraham: “Are we supposed to believe it was part of Iran's master plan to lose their entire navy, their air force, most of their missiles, not to speak of losing the ayatollah and most of the top leadership? … They’ve been neutered or close to it.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 4/8/26]
    • Hannity: “They have no navy, most of their ballistic missiles wiped out, their drones wiped out, their air defense systems wiped out, any enrichment capability for the moment, that’s wiped out too.” [Fox News, Hannity, 4/8/26]
    • Ainsley Earhardt: “We have decimated, and Israel has decimated, you know, a lot of their forces. Their missiles, their navy, all the ships that are at the bottom of the ocean.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 4/9/26]
    • Fox News host Greg Gutfeld: Iran’s “entire defense industrial base is destroyed. They can't build missiles and everybody who can build them are in hiding.” He continued, “Their navy is at the bottom of the sea. Eighty percent of their air defense is gone.” [Fox News, The Five, 4/10/26]
    • Fox & Friends co-host Lawrence Jones: “Eighty percent of Iran's air defense have been taken out. Four hundred and fifty ballistic missile storage facilities have been taken out. Ninety percent of the navy, that's 150 ships, been taken out. Ninety-five percent of the naval mines have been taken out. Eighty percent of the missile production facilities have been taken out. So, if you would look at any other conflict, you would consider it a win.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 4/10/26]
    • Former Pentagon official Brent Sadler: “The Iranians have nothing, quite frankly, and the leverage they have over the Straits of Hormuz is pretty thin given the fact that their navy is sunk, their air force is nonexistent.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 4/10/26]
    • Watters: “When Epic Fury kicked off, the president told you the goals, the targets and the timeline. He said there’d be casualties, he was honest, and gas prices would spike. But then they’d come back down. And now the ayatollah is dead, they don't have a navy, air force, air defense, and most of their missiles.” [Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, 4/16/26]
    • Hudson Institute senior fellow Rebeccah Heinrichs said on America’s Newsroom: “We have taken out their navy, taken out their missile capacity. … They don't have the ability to build those missiles, build those drones, build those air defenses.” [Fox News, America’s Newsroom, 4/20/26]
    • Jesse Watters: “The media can't decide what to do. Just kidding, they hope we lose too. First, they said we had no plan. Then, after we demolished their military, they said, Oh, yeah, now Iran has the upper hand.” [Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, 4/21/26] 
    • Jones: “It is pretty ridiculous, after we've decimated their navy, taken out their missile production sites. I still agree with the general though — Gen. Jack Keane — is, we’re on the 5-yard line right now.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 4/21/26]
    • Sean Hannity declared: “We'll eviscerate their conventional weapons. We've already done so. We've taken out their navy, their air defense systems.” [Premiere Radio Networks, The Sean Hannity Show, 4/22/26]

  • May

    • Former U.S. Central Command spokesperson Joe Buccino declared that the U.S. needed to resume “military destruction”: “The military component of this has in many ways already been won, but we can continue the strikes on infrastructure, on bridges, on oil facilities, on command and control nodes, you know, continue those strikes.” [Fox News, America’s Newsroom, 5/1/26] 
    • Jesse Watters praised Trump’s potential peace deal: “This looks nothing like the Obama deal. Getting the uranium out, banning enrichment, destroying their nuke sites, none of that was in the Obama deal. And this is on top of shredding their military. And good luck rebuilding it because we wiped out all their defense factories and steel plants.” [Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, 5/6/26] 
    • Fox News chief political analyst Brit Hume said, “The concern that the Israelis have and a number of the other gulf states have is simply this: that the president, in pursuit of a deal will settle for something that leaves too much of what Iran has in place and leaves its nuclear ambitions still being pursued and makes them feel like they're not going to be that much safer for all the destruction that's been done of Iran's military, whose effects will certainly last for a while.” [Fox News, Special Report with Bret Baier, 5/7/26]
    • Fox guest Harley Lippman: Trump “has virtually wiped out the military of our adversary with almost no American casualties.” [Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, 5/8/26] 
    • Fox contributor Dan Hoffman: “Our military strikes have been extraordinarily successful, tactically. We, together with Israel, have decapitated Iran's leadership and destroyed much of their ballistic missile capability and their drone facilities.” [Fox News, America’s Newsroom, 5/11/26]