President Trump’s Clear and Unchanging Objectives Drive Decisive Success Against Iranian Regime

Tonight, President Donald J. Trump will address the nation on Operation Epic Fury — a decisive campaign of American strength that is systematically dismantling the Iranian regime’s ability to threaten the United States and the free world.

Under President Trump’s leadership, the U.S. military is executing this mission with unmatched power and precision. From day one, the objectives have been clear and unwavering: obliterate Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal and production capability, annihilate its navy, sever its support for terrorist proxies, and ensure the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism never acquires a nuclear weapon.

Since the launch of Operation Epic Fury, the Trump Administration has repeatedly and unambiguously reaffirmed these core objectives:

• President Trump (March 2): “Our objectives are clear. First, we’re destroying Iran’s missile capabilities… and their capacity to produce brand new ones — pretty good ones they make. Second, we’re annihilating their navy… Third, we’re ensuring that the world’s number one sponsor of terror can never obtain a nuclear weapon… And finally, we’re ensuring that the Iranian regime cannot continue to arm, fund, and direct terrorist armies outside of their borders.”
• Vice President JD Vance (March 2): “Whatever happens with the regime in one form or another, it’s incidental to the President’s primary objective here — which is to make sure the Iranian terrorist regime does not build a nuclear bomb.”
• Secretary of State Marco Rubio (March 2): “The United States is conducting an operation to eliminate the threat of Iran’s short-range ballistic missiles and the threat posed by their navy… That is the clear objective of this mission.”
• U.S. Central Command Commander Admiral Brad Cooper (March 3): “Our military in the Middle East is undertaking an unprecedented operation to eliminate Iran’s ability to threaten Americans, as they’ve been doing for nearly half a century.”
• Under Secretary of War for Policy Elbridge Colby (March 3): “I think I can lay out once again the objectives of the military campaign… which are focused on addressing the ability of the Islamic Republic to project military power… And that’s primarily the missile forces of the Islamic Republic, which had obviously been growing substantially and posed a very serious threat… as well as the ability to produce that, and then the Iranian navy.”
• Secretary Rubio (March 3): “Our objectives remain, as they’ve been identified from the beginning and the President laid out clearly yesterday. Iran can never have a nuclear weapon and we will not allow Iran to hide behind the immunity of a massive short-term ballistic missile inventory, or the ability to make them or launch them… As well as the destruction of their navy.”
• Secretary of War Pete Hegseth (March 4): “The mission is laser-focused: obliterate Iran’s missiles and drones and facilities that produce them, annihilate its navy and critical security infrastructure, and sever their pathway to nuclear weapons. Iran will never possess a nuclear bomb.”
• Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine (March 4): “The Operation was again launched with clear military objectives designed to dismantle Iran’s ability to project power outside of its borders, both today and in the future. First, we are targeting and eliminating Iran’s ballistic missile systems to prevent them from threatening the U.S. forces, partners, and interests in the region. Second, we are destroying the Iranian navy, degrading its capacity capability and ability to conduct operations… Third, we’re ensuring Iran cannot rapidly rebuild or reconstitute its combat capability.”
• White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt (March 4): “At the beginning of Operation Epic Fury, launched last weekend, President Trump laid out clear objectives to the American people on what the U.S. military seeks to accomplish through these major combat operations. Number one, destroy the regime’s deadly ballistic missiles and completely raze their missile industry to the ground. Number two, annihilate the Iranian regime’s navy… Number three, Operation Epic Fury will ensure the regime’s terrorist proxies can no longer destabilize the region or the free world and attack our armed forces… Number four, this mission will guarantee Iran can never obtain a nuclear weapon.”
• Admiral Cooper (March 5): “We will systemically dismantle Iran’s missile production capability for the future, and that’s absolutely in progress…”
• Press Secretary Leavitt (March 6): “We are well on our way to achieving those objectives — annihilating Iran’s navy… taking out the ballistic missile threat that Iran posed to the United States and our troops and bases in the region… ensuring Iran can never obtain a nuclear weapon, as well, and significantly weakening their proxies in the region.”
• President Trump (March 9): “We’re achieving major strides toward completing our military objective… Most of Iran’s naval power has been sunk… We continue to target Iran’s drone and missile capabilities… We’re also annihilating the manufacturing base that the regime uses to build drones and missiles.”
• Secretary Rubio (March 9): “It is important to continue to remind the American people of why it is that the greatest military in the history of the world is engaged in this operation. It is to destroy the ability of this regime to launch missiles both by destroying their missiles and their launchers, destroy the factories that make these missiles, and destroy their navy.”
• Secretary Hegseth (March 10): “[Our objectives] are straightforward and we are executing them with ruthless precision. One, destroy their missile stockpiles, their missile launchers, and their defense industrial base — missiles and their ability to make them. Two, destroy their navy. And three, permanently deny Iran nuclear weapons forever.”
• General Caine (March 10): “The joint force remains focused on three military objectives: continue to destroy Iranian ballistic missiles and drone capability in order to prevent attacks on the U.S. and others throughout the region. And this means attacking launch sites, command and control nodes, stockpiles before they can threaten our personnel, our facilities and our partners. Second, we continue to strike the Iranian Navy and their capabilities in order to do things like sustain movement through the Straits of Hormuz. And third, we continue to start working on and going deeper into Iran’s military and industrial base in order to prevent the regime from being able to attack Americans, our interests, and our partners for years to come and project power outside their borders.”
• Press Secretary Leavitt (March 10): “Moving forward, the stated objectives for Operation Epic Fury remain the same: destroy the terrorist regime’s ballistic missiles, raze their Iranian missile industry to the ground, ensure their terrorist proxies can no longer destabilize the region, and ensure that Iran never obtains a nuclear weapon.”
• Secretary Hegseth (March 13): “I serve God, the troops, the country, the Constitution, and the President of the United States and answer only to those, all in service of victory on the battlefield and the military objectives that we’ve laid out from day one: defeat the missiles, missile launchers, and defense industrial base, which I laid out today; defeat the navy; and deny Iran the ability to have a nuclear weapon.”
• Secretary Hegseth (March 13): “We define success — again, 13 days in — by reaching the military objectives that we’ve laid out: launchers, missile launchers, defense industrial base, their navy, the ability to project power on the naval sense, leading toward denying them to get a nuclear weapon.”
• White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller (March 18): “The American military objective is to neuter the regime — to render them impotent. That is what President Trump is doing. Day by day, the regime is being rendered impotent in terms of being able to wield instruments of national power against the world… President Trump will not allow this regime — this bloodlusting regime — to hold us hostage with energy blackmail, with missile blackmail, or with nuclear blackmail.”
• Secretary Hegseth (March 19): “Our objectives, given directly from our America First President, remain exactly what they were on day one. Destroy missiles, launchers, and Iran’s defense industrial base so they cannot rebuild, destroy their navy, and Iran never gets a nuclear weapon — our objectives from day one.”
• General Caine (March 19): “U.S. Central Command remains on plan to achieve our military objectives and remain unrelenting in our pursuit of Iranian missile capabilities, UAV capabilities and their navy, and as the secretary said, their industrial base.”
• Admiral Cooper (March 21): “U.S. forces continue to take bold action and remain on plan to eliminate Iran’s ability to project meaningful power outside its borders… Iran has lost significant combat capability over the last three weeks. We are taking out thousands of Iranian missiles, advanced attack drones, and all of Iran’s navy… Their navy is not sailing, their tactical fighters are not flying, and they’ve lost the ability to launch missiles and drones at the high rates seen at the beginning of the conflict.”
• Vice President Vance (March 26): “The Iranian conventional military is effectively destroyed. They don’t have a navy. They don’t have the ability to hit us like they could have even a few weeks ago… The most important American national security objective that exists for any Administration at any time is you don’t want the worst people in the world to have a nuclear weapon. That’s why the President is doing this.”
• Secretary Hegseth (March 26): “Operation Epic Fury is not an endless war. It’s a decisive campaign with clear objectives to destroy Iran’s offensive military capabilities and ensure they never obtain a nuclear weapon… Our objectives are clear: no nukes, no navy, and a complete dismantling of their missile program and defense industrial base.”
• Secretary Rubio (March 26): “[President Trump] defined very clearly on the first night of this operation what the goal was. We were going to destroy Iran’s navy, and that is happening… We were going to destroy their missile launching capabilities. We’re well on our way to achieving that goal.  We were going to destroy the factory so they couldn’t make more missiles and more drones, and that is moving forward. Every single objective the president clearly laid out on the first night of this operation is being effectuated.”
• Vice President Vance (March 28): “That was fundamentally the President’s goal. He said, ‘Look, this country, they’re threatening us in all these ways. They’re still trying to build a nuclear weapon. We need to neuter them for a very, very long time,’ and that’s the purpose.”
• Secretary Rubio (March 30): “We’ve destroyed their navy. We’ve destroyed their air force. We are well on our way to destroying the majority of their arms factories. And we are well on our way to significantly degrading their missile launchers. When those objectives are achieved, we will have achieved the purpose of this operation.”
• Secretary Rubio (March 30): “This is about very specific objectives. The President laid them out on the first night of the operation… Here they are — you should write them down. Number one, the destruction of their air force. Number two, the destruction of their navy. Number three, the severe diminishing of their missile launching capability. And number four, the destruction of their factories so they can’t make more missiles and more drones to threaten us in the future. All of this so that they can never hide behind it to acquire a nuclear weapon. That was our objective from the beginning; that remains our objective now.”
• Press Secretary Leavitt (March 30): “As I’ve said repeatedly and as the President has laid out, the objectives of Operation Epic Fury are as follows: destroying the Iranian navy, destroying their ballistic missiles, dismantling their defense industrial infrastructure that produces those weapons that have long threatened the United States and our allies, and then, of course, preventing Iran from ever obtaining a nuclear weapon.”
• Secretary Hegseth (March 31): “Our core objectives from this podium, from day one — from me, from the Chairman, from the President, from the Vice President, from Secretary Rubio, and others — have been clear. Defense missile production and missile programs, so their entire missile program, defense industrial base, and production ability to build, and navy and power projection… And then of course, wrapping it all is Iran’s never going to have a nuclear weapon.”
• Secretary Rubio (March 31): “We were going to destroy their air force; we have largely done that. We were going to destroy their navy, which we have largely achieved that. We were going to destroy a significant percentage of their missile launches; we are well on our way to achieving that. And we were going to wipe out their defense industrial base… We are on our way to doing that. Those were our four objectives because those were the four things they were going to hide behind to then develop a nuclear weapon.”
• Admiral Cooper (March 31): “Now in our fifth week of the campaign, it is my operational assessment that we are making undeniable progress in eliminating Iran’s ability to project power in meaningful ways outside of its borders. We don’t see their navy sailing, we don’t see their aircraft flying, and their air defense and missile defense systems have largely been destroyed.”