FACT-CHECK: Trump Claims to Have Destroyed 90% of Iran’s Military Capabilities — Here’s What the Facts Say

When Total Victory Was Already an Illusion

There is a historical precedent that Washington seems to have forgotten. In 1991, after 43 days of intensive bombing of Iraq—the most massive air campaign since World War II—post-conflict assessments revealed that the strikes had destroyed less than half of Iraq’s military capabilities. The initial, triumphant estimates had been systematically inflated.

In 2003, it happened again. “Shock and Awe” promised rapid and total destruction. Twenty years of quagmire followed. Iraq’s conventional capabilities were neutralized, to be sure. But its capacity for asymmetric warfare—insurgency, improvised explosive devices, urban warfare—survived, mutated, and proliferated.

Iran is not Iraq—and that is precisely the problem

Iran in 2026 is not Iraq in 2003. It is a country three times larger in area. Its mountainous terrain makes ground operations a nightmare. It has one of the largest ballistic missile programs in the Middle East—between 3,000 and 5,000 missiles of various ranges, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies. It has a network of armed proxies stretching from Beirut to Sanaa.

To destroy 90% of all that from the air, without a ground operation, in just a few weeks? Serious military analysts have one word to describe this claim. That word is “implausible.”

The Pentagon’s Deafening Silence

When the President of the United States announces a military victory of this magnitude, one expects the Department of Defense to confirm it. One expects the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to hold a briefing. One expects images of the damage to be presented. One expects verifiable figures to be provided to congressional committees.

Yet, as of this writing, none of that has happened. The Pentagon has merely confirmed that strikes took place and that they hit their targets—targets which, it should be noted, were never publicly defined as the destruction of 90% of Iran’s capabilities.

And yet, this silence does not prevent the figure from circulating. From being repeated. From becoming, by the sheer force of repetition, a media truth that no one takes the time to verify.

Dissenting Voices in the Intelligence Community

Sources within the U.S. intelligence community, cited by The New York Times and The Washington Post, have expressed significant reservations. The internal damage assessment—the BDA, or Battle Damage Assessment—is reportedly still underway. Preliminary results suggest actual but partial destruction at the targeted sites.

“Partial,” in military terminology, is the exact opposite of 90%.

A former CIA analyst specializing in Iran, interviewed by Reuters, used an illuminating metaphor: striking the branches of a tree does not kill the roots. The visible infrastructure may have been damaged. The underground infrastructure, the technological know-how, and the dispersed missile production lines—all of that is another story.

Why this number, why now?

The timing of this statement is no coincidence. Trump simultaneously asserts that negotiations are underway with Iranian leaders. And he accompanies this assertion with a threat: if the talks fail, the bombings will continue “merrily.”

That word—“blithely.” Let it sink in. The President of the United States is using an adverb that evokes lightheartedness, almost joy, to describe the bombing of a country with 88 million people. This is no linguistic accident. It’s a strategy of maximum pressure disguised as casual chatter.

The figure of 90% serves a specific purpose in this equation. It tells Iran: you’ve already lost. It tells the U.S. Congress: the mission is nearly accomplished. It tells the Gulf allies: your protector has delivered. It tells American voters: I’ve won.

The Trumpian Art of Quantitative Exaggeration

This isn’t the first time Donald Trump has used spectacular and unverifiable figures as a rhetorical tool. Observers of his political communication recognize a recurring pattern. The figure is always a round number. Always impressive. Always favorable. And always—systematically—impossible to verify immediately.

In 2017, he claimed to have created “millions” of jobs in just a few months. In 2020, the United States had achieved “the greatest economic comeback in history.” In 2025, during his second term, the trade agreements were “the best ever negotiated.” Each time, the claim came before the fact-check. Each time, the fact-check—when it finally arrived—told a more nuanced story.

Tehran Denies Everything—But What Are Its Arguments?

The Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has categorically denied the existence of negotiations with Washington. This denial, reported by Iranian state media, is unambiguous. There are no talks. No group of leaders is in contact with the Americans. The Islamic Republic’s position is clear and unchanged.

Should we take this denial at face value? Not necessarily. Iran has a long tradition of secret negotiations followed by public denials. The talks that led to the 2015 nuclear deal began in the utmost secrecy in Oman, while Tehran publicly denied any contact with Washington.

But the Iranian denial reveals something else. It shows that, if negotiations are indeed taking place, they are so fragile that a single presidential tweet could derail them. And that Trump, by making them public before they have been concluded, is playing an extremely dangerous game.

The Dilemma of a Wounded Regime

If the U.S. strikes did indeed cause significant damage—even well below 90%—Iran faces a classic strategic dilemma. Retaliate and risk an escalation into an all-out war it cannot win. Or negotiate and accept a form of public humiliation that the Revolutionary Guards regime considers existential.

A regime that has survived eight years of war against Iraq, decades of sanctions, and the assassination of Qassem Soleimani does not capitulate just because a U.S. president claims to have won on a television set.

Paris and the Tightrope Walker’s Stance

France, through its Minister of the Armed Forces Catherine Vautrin, described the situation as a “significant military effort,” referring to the presence of French forces in the Gulf. These were carefully chosen words. No confirmation of the 90% figure. No questioning of it either. A diplomatic balancing act that implicitly reveals the Europeans’ unease.

For Washington’s allies are caught in a bind. To publicly contradict the U.S. president on a military figure is to undermine the alliance at the worst possible moment. To endorse it without proof is to become complicit in potential disinformation with major geopolitical consequences.

The Gulf Holds Its Breath

The Gulf monarchies—Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Qatar—are watching this escalation with barely concealed anxiety. The Strait of Hormuz, through which one-fifth of the world’s oil passes, is within range of Iranian missiles. Whether 90% or 30% of these missiles have been destroyed radically changes the region’s security equation.

And that may be the most dangerous consequence of this unverifiable figure. If it is false—if Iran retains significant strike capabilities—then the Gulf states that base their strategic decisions on Washington’s assertions are taking risks they do not fully appreciate.

The Weapon That Bombs Cannot Destroy

There is a simple test to assess the credibility of the 90% figure: the Strait of Hormuz. If Iran has truly lost 90% of its military capabilities, it has lost its ability to close—or even threaten to close—this strategic 33-kilometer-wide waterway.

Yet marine insurance companies have not lowered their premiums for tankers transiting the Strait of Hormuz. Western navies have not reduced their presence in the Gulf. The price of oil has not plummeted as it would have if the Iranian threat had been neutralized by 90%.

The markets—which do not engage in politics, do not vote, and do not pose for the cameras—tell a different story than that of the U.S. president. And when the markets and a politician contradict each other, it is generally prudent to listen to the markets.

Mines, Fast Attack Craft, and Asymmetric Warfare

Iran’s capacity to cause harm in the Gulf does not rely solely on ballistic missiles fired from fixed sites. It relies on thousands of naval mines stored in scattered warehouses. On hundreds of armed fast attack craft belonging to the Revolutionary Guards, hidden in coves along the coast. On mobile, camouflaged anti-ship missiles. On cyber capabilities that require no physical infrastructure to operate.

How do you bomb a military doctrine? How do you destroy from the air 45 years’ worth of accumulated expertise in asymmetric warfare? The answer is that you don’t. And to claim otherwise is either ignorance or manipulation.

What 90% Doesn’t Mean

Amid all this rhetoric of mass destruction, one question is conspicuously absent. What about Iran’s nuclear program? Have the underground centrifuges at Fordow—buried beneath a mountain 80 meters deep—been affected? Have the stocks of enriched uranium—which the IAEA estimated at the end of 2025 would be sufficient to produce several nuclear weapons—been neutralized?

Trump says nothing about this. This silence is deafening. For if the strikes destroyed missile bases and radar systems but left the heart of the nuclear program intact, then the figure of 90% is not merely exaggerated. It is misleading to the point of being dangerous.

Destroying 90% of conventional capabilities while leaving the nuclear program intact is not winning a war. It is accelerating proliferation.

The Paradox of Nuclear Escalation

Here is the tragic irony that no one in Washington seems willing to confront. If U.S. strikes have indeed significantly degraded Iran’s conventional capabilities—even by 40 or 50 percent, not 90 percent—then the Iranian regime is left with a massive incentive to accelerate its nuclear program. Because the atomic bomb becomes the sole guarantee of survival for a regime that can no longer rely on its conventional forces.

This is the paradox that strategists call the “security dilemma.” In seeking to destroy a threat, one can create an even greater one. And a president who parades on the ruins of a conventional arsenal may well have paved the way for a nuclear Iran.

When Numbers Replace Evidence

We live in an age where a number stated on camera carries more weight than a 200-page assessment report. Where it takes longer to verify a claim than it does for it to spread. Where a presidential statement goes viral in four minutes, while refuting it takes four weeks.

The figure of 90% has already become a social fact, regardless of its veracity. Millions of people have heard it. Thousands of commentators have repeated it. Hundreds of articles have included it in their headlines—sometimes in quotation marks, often without. The work of disinformation, if there is any, has already been accomplished.

The Duty to Verify in the Face of Media Urgency

And yet, the role of the columnist—not the journalist, but the columnist—is to reject speed when it stands in the way of the truth. To ask the question everyone avoids. To say, with brutal clarity: we don’t know. We don’t know if it’s 90%, 50%, or 20%. We don’t know because no one has provided the evidence. And in a democracy, the absence of evidence is no minor detail.

It is the very foundation of a leader’s credibility.

Three words that carry more weight than bombs

In the middle of his statement about the 90%, Trump slipped in another phrase, almost in passing. A “regime change” is reportedly underway in Iran. Three words. No details. No mechanism described. No source cited. Just the bare assertion, stated as if it were obvious, that the theocratic regime that has ruled Iran since 1979 is falling.

If true, this is the most significant geopolitical event of the 21st century since September 11. If false, it is a provocation that could radicalize the hardest-line factions of the Iranian regime, undermine the moderates, and make any negotiations impossible.

Lessons Never Learned

America has already attempted “regime change” in Iran. In 1953, with the CIA- and MI6-orchestrated overthrow of Mossadegh. The result, twenty-six years later: the Islamic Revolution. America attempted regime change in Iraq. In Libya. In Afghanistan. Each time, the regime fell. Each time, what replaced it was worse.

They say history doesn’t repeat itself. But it rhymes. And that rhyme tastes of blood.

The Mystery of the Phantom Negotiators

Trump claims to be negotiating with a “group of Iranian leaders” whom he refuses to identify. This phrasing raises dizzying questions. Are they members of the current government negotiating in secret? Opposition figures in exile? Former officials acting as intermediaries? Military figures from the Revolutionary Guards seeking a way out?

Each of these scenarios has radically different implications. Negotiating with the current regime means seeking an agreement. Negotiating with the opposition in exile means preparing a coup. Negotiating with dissident military figures means fomenting an internal rift.

The Impossibility of Verification

And this is where the 90% figure and the “unidentified leaders” converge in the same logic of unverifiability. You cannot prove that the figure is false. You cannot identify unnamed interlocutors. You cannot refute a regime change “in progress” for which no one sees any signs. It’s all assertion. Nothing is demonstrable.

This isn’t political communication. It’s narrative architecture—a story constructed in such a way that it’s immune to verification.

Democracy needs verifiable data

In a functioning democracy, a president who commits his country to a major military operation is accountable—to Congress, to the press, and to the people. Briefings are classified when necessary, but strategic outcomes are communicated with a minimum of transparency.

The 90% figure, in the absence of any independent corroboration, bypasses this mechanism. It creates a rhetorical fait accompli. It makes debate impossible—for how can one debate a figure that no one can either confirm or refute? Can Congress vote for or against continuing the strikes based on an unsourced presidential assertion?

The Precedent of Weapons of Mass Destruction

There’s a ghost in this room, and his name is Colin Powell. On February 5, 2003, the U.S. Secretary of State stood before the UN Security Council with a vial and satellite images to assert that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. The figures were precise. The evidence was visual. The presentation was convincing.

It was all a lie.

That lie cost hundreds of thousands of lives. It destabilized an entire region for decades. It destroyed the credibility of the U.S. government’s word around the world. And it began, just like today, with a spectacular figure that no one verified in time.

What We Know for Certain

Here is what verifiable facts allow us to state. Yes, the United States carried out massive airstrikes against Iranian military installations. Yes, significant damage was inflicted on identified sites. Yes, air defense capabilities and certain ballistic missile facilities were degraded.

And here is what we do not know. We do not know whether the figure of 90% corresponds to any military reality. We do not know whether negotiations are actually underway. We do not know whether regime change is “underway.” We do not know who the alleged Iranian negotiators are.

The Duty of Honesty in the Face of Uncertainty

When a president gives you a figure and neither his own generals, nor his allies, nor the markets, nor the intelligence agencies, nor independent satellite imagery corroborate it—that figure is not a fact. It is a communication tool.

This does not mean that Trump is necessarily lying. It means that the claim has not met the standard of proof required by the gravity of the situation. Lives are at stake. The stability of a region that supplies the world with energy is at stake. The credibility of the world’s leading power is at stake.

And yet, in the face of all this, what we’ve been given is a round number. Ninety percent. Out of context. Without a briefing. Without evidence. And, to top it off, the threat to bomb “gleefully” if things don’t go as planned.

One man’s glee at the destruction of another country should terrify us more than the missiles themselves.

Signed, Jacques PJ Provost