{"id":350417,"date":"2026-03-21T06:51:20","date_gmt":"2026-03-21T06:51:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/350417\/"},"modified":"2026-03-21T06:51:20","modified_gmt":"2026-03-21T06:51:20","slug":"hegseth-has-repeatedly-said-the-us-is-upping-the-frequency-of-its-iran-strikes-the-data-tells-a-different-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/350417\/","title":{"rendered":"Hegseth has repeatedly said the US is upping the frequency of its Iran strikes. The data tells a different story"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n While Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has repeatedly stated that the number and intensity of the strikes the US is carrying out against Iran<\/a> is only increasing, data provided by the US military shows a pace of operations that has ebbed and flowed over the last three weeks.\n <\/p>\n

\n As Hegseth has gone to the podium alongside Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine in a series of press conferences, he has repeatedly asserted that the coming day would bring the most US strikes on Iran yet.\n <\/p>\n

\n Starting on March 4, his second briefing on the war which began on February 28, Hegseth said \u201cmore and larger waves\u201d of strikes were coming, and that the Defense Department was \u201caccelerating, not decelerating.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cIran\u2019s capabilities are evaporating by the hour,\u201d he said. On March 10, he said that \u201ctoday will be yet again our most intense day of strikes inside Iran.\u201d And on Thursday, Hegseth said, \u201ctoday will be the largest strike package yet, just like yesterday was.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n But data released publicly by US Central Command has not shown that the number of strikes has increased daily the way Hegseth has indicated, which could partly be due to the need to adjust the frequency of flights as aircraft and ships receive maintenance while operations continue, or because the military started with a set target list and is now working to identify and confirm new targets.\n <\/p>\n

\n US Central Command referred questions from CNN to the Defense Department. A department official told CNN, \u201cAs the Secretary and Admiral (Brad) Cooper have said, the Department of War continues to intensify our operations against military targets in Iran.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n The discrepancy speaks to a disconnect between how the war is being messaged and the reality on the ground. During briefings to the press, Hegseth has said the US is \u201cwinning decisively\u201d; that Iran\u2019s air defenses have been \u201cflattened\u201d and industrial base \u201coverwhelmingly destroyed\u201d; and that Iran has \u201cno air defenses\u2026no air force\u2026.no Navy.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Undoubtedly, Iran\u2019s military capabilities have been degraded significantly and Israel has killed senior Iranian leaders including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and Ali Larijani, the head of Iran\u2019s National Security Council.\n <\/p>\n

\n However, the US has struggled to secure safe passage for commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz<\/a>, which has been effectively closed due to threats from Iran. Tehran has continued<\/a> retaliating<\/a> against neighboring nations<\/a> and US forces throughout the region. On Thursday, a US F-35 fighter jet made an emergency landing<\/a> after sources said it was believed to have been struck by Iran during a combat mission, raising questions about Hegseth\u2019s claim on March 4 that by the end of that week, the US and Israel would have \u201ccomplete control of Iranian skies.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n And the public strike numbers released by US Central Command reveal that the waves of attacks since Hegseth\u2019s first briefing have not been increasing steadily, despite Hegseth\u2019s rhetoric indicating otherwise.\n <\/p>\n

\n It\u2019s not particularly surprising that the number of strikes would increase or decrease over time, Mark Cancian, a retired Marine Corps colonel and senior adviser to the Center for Strategic and International Studies\u2019 Defense and Security Department told CNN. It could reflect that the operation is moving into a sustained air campaign, meaning the military will need to provide maintenance to aircraft and ships as the operations continue, whereas at the beginning, \u201cyou can just surge,\u201d Cancian said. The USS Gerald R. Ford, for example, is moving away from participating in the operations briefly to conduct repairs<\/a> in Souda Bay, Crete, after a fire broke out in the ship\u2019s laundry area.\n <\/p>\n

\n But the pace of operations could decrease and increase as the military works to find new targets, Cancian said. The military \u201cstarted the campaign with a CENTCOM target list, which has been maintained for decades,\u201d he said. Nearly three weeks and more than 7,000 targets later, they have likely worked through much of that list and are expanding it as more intelligence comes in.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cI think for both reasons, that rate of attacks has sort of moderated to a level that is on average, below 1,000 a day,\u201d Cancian said.\n <\/p>\n

\n Strike data has not been released daily showing the increase in targets hit; CENTCOM has instead released data every few days showing an increase in targets struck. Using that data, the average number of strikes per day in the interim shows the number of strikes has increased and decreased over time \u2014 though the peak was reached on the first day of the operation when CENTCOM said more than 1,000 targets were hit.\n <\/p>\n

\n Numbers released by CENTCOM on March 9<\/a> and March 12<\/a>, for example, show that targets struck increased by roughly 1,000, amount to an average of 333 strikes per day. But on March 10, in the middle of that period, Hegseth said, \u201ctoday will be yet again our most intense day of strikes inside Iran, the most fighters, the most bombers, the most strikes, intelligence more refined and better than ever.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n On March 13, Hegseth said that \u201ctoday will be yet again the highest volume of strikes that America has put over the skies of Iran and Tehran.\u201d But from March 12<\/a> to March 16<\/a>, the US averaged roughly 250 strikes per day according to an average of CENTCOM\u2019s data, as the targets struck increased from approximately 6,000 on March 12 to more than 7,000 on March 16.\n <\/p>\n

\n There have been moments of uptick in the average number of strikes: On March 2<\/a>, roughly 250 targets were struck, which increased to 450 targets struck on March 3. And between March 6<\/a> and March 9<\/a>, there was an average of 666 targets hit per day, up from an average of 433 targets struck between March 3 and March 6.\n <\/p>\n

\n \ufeffThis story has been updated with additional details.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has repeatedly stated that the number and intensity of the strikes the US…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":350418,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-350417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=350417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350417\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/350418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=350417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=350417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=350417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}