Nearly one month into the American and Israeli military campaign against Iran, U.S. intelligence can confirm with certainty the destruction of only about a third of Iran’s missile stockpile, Reuters reported — a picture that stands in sharp contrast to President Donald Trump’s public claims that Tehran has “very few rockets left.”

The status of roughly another third remains unclear, though bombings are believed to have damaged, destroyed, or buried those weapons inside Iran’s extensive network of underground tunnels and bunkers, four of the sources said. A similar level of uncertainty applies to Iran’s drone capability, one source added. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the intelligence.

The assessment suggests that while most of Iran’s missiles are either confirmed destroyed or likely inaccessible, Tehran retains a significant inventory and could potentially recover buried or damaged weapons once hostilities end.

Trump appeared to recognize the threat posed by Iran’s remaining arsenal during a televised Cabinet meeting Thursday, even as he downplayed its size. Discussing the prospect of deploying U.S. troops to secure the Strait of Hormuz, the president acknowledged the danger that even a small surviving missile capability would pose to American naval assets.

“Let’s say we do a great job. We say we got 99%. One percent is unacceptable, because 1% is a missile going into the hull of a ship that cost a billion dollars,” Trump said.

U.S. Central Command has characterized Operation Epic Fury as on schedule or ahead of its pre-war planning targets. Strikes have hit more than 10,000 Iranian military targets as of Wednesday, and Central Command says 92 percent of the Iranian navy’s large vessels have been sunk. The military has also published imagery showing attacks on Iranian weapons production facilities, stressing that the campaign targets not just existing stockpiles but the industrial base behind them.

Still, Central Command has declined to publicly quantify how much of Iran’s missile or drone capability has been eliminated. One Reuters source said a core difficulty lies in determining how many missiles were stored underground before the war began. Pre-war estimates of the size of Iran’s stockpile range from around 2,500, according to Israeli military figures, to as many as 6,000 by some analysts’ calculations.

Despite weeks of sustained bombardment, Iran has continued to demonstrate offensive capability. On Thursday alone, Tehran launched 15 ballistic missiles and 11 drones at the United Arab Emirates, according to the UAE Defense Ministry. Last week, Iranian forces fired long-range missiles at the U.S.-UK military base on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean — a first-of-its-kind strike that showcased capabilities not previously deployed.

Nicole Grajewski, an expert on Iran’s missile forces at Sciences Po in Paris, said the administration may have overstated the campaign’s effectiveness, pointing to Iran’s ability to continue launching strikes from the Bid Kaneh military facility even after it was heavily bombed. She estimated that Iran still retains roughly 30 percent of its missile capability, noting the country has more than a dozen large underground facilities capable of sheltering launchers and missiles.

One senior U.S. official expressed doubt about the possibility of ever reaching a precise count. “I don’t know if we’ll ever have an accurate number,” the official said, citing uncertainty about how many weapons remain underground and potentially accessible.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth acknowledged the challenge on March 19, comparing Iran’s tunnel infrastructure to the network built by Hamas in Gaza. “They’ve poured any aid, any economic development, humanitarian aid, into tunnels and rockets,” he said, adding that the military is “hunting them down methodically, ruthlessly and overwhelmingly” — though he offered no specific figures on the percentage of missiles or drones destroyed.

Rep. Seth Moulton, a Democrat and Marine Corps veteran of four tours in Iraq, disputed the president’s characterization of Iran’s diminished capability. “If Iran is smart they’ve retained some of their capability — they’re not using everything that they have,” Moulton said. “And they’re laying in wait.”

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