Trump: US ‘hasn’t even started destroying what’s left in Iran’

Iran said the bridge attack killed eight people and wounded 95, all civilians, and that a second strike an hour after the first came as local medical teams were attending to the injured. “IT IS TIME FOR IRAN TO MAKE A DEAL BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE,

And There Is Nothing Left Of What

STILL COULD BECOME A GREAT COUNTRY!.” Trump wrote in all caps yesterday afternoon, and then in an early morning Truth Social Post today, he vowed more destruction was coming.

“Our Military, the greatest and most powerful (by far!) anywhere in the World, hasn’t even started destroying what’s left in Iran. Bridges next, then Electric Power Plants!,” he wrote.

“New Regime leadership knows what has to be done, and has to be done, FAST!”

Diminishing Returns

: Three weeks ago President Trump, in a brief phone call with Axios’s Barak Ravid, mused that the war was going so well there was “practically nothing left to target.” Clearly, that was not the case, but according to a report this morning from Politico, most of the low-hanging fruit is gone.

“The Pentagon is running out of strategically important targets,” Politico says, citing “two current defense officials and a former Trump administration official.”

“We can just keep working through a list of targets of ever-decreasing significance and continue to piss them off to the point that the [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] has a solid lock on the government and they feel justified in waging a holy war against the U.S. in perpetuity,” one of the defense officials was quoted as saying. The former Trump official claimed that Iran’s remaining ballistic missile stockpiles “are getting harder and harder to hit, because the ones that remain are likely in hardened bunkers,” and that “otherwise they would’ve been taken out already.” At the same time CNN is reporting that, according to a recent U.S. intelligence assessment, “roughly half of Iran’s missile launchers are still intact and thousands of one-way attack drones remain in Iran’s arsenal.”

Three different sources were cited, but not named in the report, which also said Iran still has thousands of Iranian drones — roughly 50% of what it had before the war, and that a “large percentage” of “Iran’s coastal defense cruise missiles remain intact.”

“They are still very much poised to wreak absolute havoc throughout the entire region,” one of the sources said. Hours after the U.S. bridge attack, Iran’s Fars News Agency, the IRGC’s official media outlet, published a list of eight bridges located in U.S. allied nations as “possible retaliation targets.” PENTAGON: ‘COMPLETELY WRONG’: The White House and the Pentagon pushed back against the reports.

White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly told CNN that “anonymous sources desperately want to attack President Trump and demean the incredible work of our United States Military in achieving the goals of Operation Epic Fury.”

“The terrorist regime is being decimated militarily, and their dismal situation grows bleaker by the day – their only hope is to make a deal with President Trump’s administration and leave behind their nuclear ambitions for good,” Kelly told CNN.

“Otherwise, they will be hit harder than they’ve ever been hit before.”

“Completely wrong,” is how Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell characterized the CNN report.

“The United States military has delivered a crippling series of blows to the Iranian regime,” Parnell said.

“We are far ahead of schedule on accomplishing our military objectives: destroy Iran’s missile arsenal, annihilate their Navy, destroy their terrorist proxies, and ensure Iran can never obtain a nuclear weapon.” The denials come as Iran continues to demonstrate that even with its severely degraded military capacity, it still has the ability to terrorize its neighbors by hitting critical infrastructure. Kuwait said this morning that an Iranian attack hit an oil refinery and damaged a desalination plant, and that some of the plant’s components suffered “material damage.”

The attacks on desalination plants are of particular concern because for most Gulf States, there are no sources of water other than the salty waters of the Persian Gulf. Good Friday morning and welcome to Jamie McIntyre’s Daily on Defense, written and compiled by Washington Examiner National Security Senior Writer Jamie McIntyre (@jamiejmcintyre) and edited by Christopher Tremoglie. Email here with tips, suggestions, calendar items, and anything else.

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Happening Today :

Massacre Of The Generals

: War Secretary Pete Hegseth’s scorched-earth campaign to purge the Pentagon of senior military officials deemed insufficiently on board with President Trump’s priorities claimed three more victims yesterday, including the chief of staff of the Army, a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

“General Randy A. George will be retiring from his position as the 41st Chief of Staff of the Army effective immediately,” spokesman Sean Parnell posted on X. “The Department of War is grateful for General George’s decades of service to our nation. We wish him well in his retirement.” No reason was given for the abrupt firing of George, who was said to be in a meeting at the Pentagon, when he got word Hegseth was demanding his immediate resignation.

He is expected to be replaced by the Vice Chief Gen. Christopher LaNeve, who, before being nominated for the No. 2 job, was Hegseth’s military assistant. The Washington Post reports two other Army generals were fired along with George: Gen. David Hodne, head of the Army’s Transformation Command in October, and Maj. Gen. William Green, chief of Army chaplains. The New York Times reported Hegseth’s grievance against George appeared related to the general’s close relationship with his direct civilian boss, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, who Hegseth views as a rival.

“Hegseth has also clashed in recent months with General George and Mr. Driscoll over the defense secretary’s decision to block the promotion of four Army officers to be one-star generals.”

“Officials at the White House are also discussing the future of Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, a close friend of Vice President J. D. Vance,” the Atlantic reported, citing “people familiar with the matter.”

“One Pentagon official said Driscoll was expected to leave the department soon,” the Atlantic report said, noting “Hegseth and Driscoll, both Army veterans with political ambitions, have been locked in a rivalry over the past year,” according to current and former officials. ‘DEEPLY DISTURBING’: The firing of the Army’s top general in the middle of war, for no apparent reason, sent shockwaves through the Pentagon and Capitol Hill. Rep. Rich McCormick (R-GA) was caught unaware when an anchor on Newsmax told him about the news as it was breaking around 5 p.m. “I’m very curious to hear why. I mean, Gen. George is a brilliant mind,” McCormick said, calling him one of the “brighter minds we have in the military.”

“I’ve never heard him say anything contrary to what the president is trying to achieve. I thought he’s done a really good job getting the Army ready for war, so I’d like to hear more because that’s concerning to me,” McCormick said.

In a rare move, the Joint Chiefs of Staff put out a statement on X, heaping praise on George and expressing gratitude “for his decades of steadfast service to our nation.