“They have no navy left.” After Iran attacked U.S. bases, Washington answered with overwhelming force. In just 48 hours, cruise missiles and airstrikes wiped out much of Iran’s fleet in the Gulf of Oman, destroying key warships and shattering decades of naval doctrine. The strike echoes the infamous 1988 clash—but on a far bigger scale. How did Iran’s strategy collapse so quickly, and why did its ships never even see the attack coming next unfold?
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00:00They have no navy. It's been knocked out.
00:03Those are the words of US President Donald Trump on March 3rd,
00:07following 48 hours that had utterly ruined Iran's naval fleet.
00:11Iran challenged the US. That was a mistake.
00:14Bombs and missiles flew and Iran's entire fleet was wiped out in just two days.
00:19This is historically bad for Iran,
00:21and it's only going to get worse for a regime that is collapsing before our eyes.
00:25After initial American and Israeli strikes on Iran wiped out a huge chunk of the country's leadership,
00:31Iran responded with attacks on several US military bases.
00:35OK, the US said, we see your base attacks and we'll raise you with the destruction of your entire naval
00:40fleet.
00:41US Tomahawks flew in an operation that overwhelmed any strategy that Iran's navy had,
00:46and the results speak for themselves.
00:49Iran has lost 11 of its warships, along with several of its attack submarines,
00:53and the US has unleashed a devastating wave of firepower
00:57that serves as a reminder to Iran's crumbling regime, as if one was needed,
01:01that anything Iran can try is just going to be met with a bigger and far more devastating response from
01:06the US.
01:07In a few minutes, we're going to explain how the US left Iran's entire navy crippled in just 48 hours.
01:13Before we do, let's take a deeper look at the results.
01:16We can sum it up in seven words.
01:18The Gulf of Oman has been emptied.
01:20That's according to the US Central Command, or CENTCOM, which took to X to explain what it had pulled off
01:25in just two days.
01:26Two days ago, the Iranian regime had 11 ships in the Gulf of Oman.
01:30Today, they have zero.
01:32The Iranian regime has harassed and attacked international shipping in the Gulf of Oman for decades.
01:37Those days are over, CENTCOM declared.
01:40There's a hint here about why the US took aim at Iran's navy.
01:44We'll get into later.
01:45But the big news here is that some of Iran's most important warships are out of the war just days
01:50into the fight,
01:51destroying Iran's naval posture in an instant.
01:54And we don't have to take CENTCOM's word for it.
01:57Satellite photographs are already emerging that showcase the scale of the damage that America's strikes have caused.
02:03The Iris Makran, which is Iran's first forward-based ship, is down.
02:07That vessel was struck while it was moored in Bandar Abbas, naval news reports.
02:11And it means that the US has taken out what was once an oil tanker,
02:15but has since become a military vessel capable of supporting helicopter operations.
02:19With a displacement of 120,000 tons, the Iris Makran was among the largest vessels in the Middle East region.
02:26Now, satellite photographs show fires on its berth and smoke streaming out of the warship's central portion.
02:32A Jamaran-class corvette that was stationed at a pier in Chabaha has also been taken out,
02:37armed with anti-ship and surface-to-air missiles along with torpedoes.
02:40This type of ship was supposed to be central to Iran's naval strategy.
02:44Iran has six of them, and at least one now stuck at Conorak naval base with smoke streaming out of
02:49it.
02:50The list goes on and on.
02:51The Telegraph reveals that satellite imagery captured by Planet Labs
02:55shows the Bandar Abbas region, where at least 11 of Iran's warships were docked as recently as February 22nd,
03:00is now blanketed in a smog of thick black smoke following America's heavy bombing campaign.
03:05The remains of the Iris Makran can be seen in the photos that the Telegraph shares.
03:09However, the biggest hit came against Iran's best warship, the Iris Shaheed Bagheri.
03:15The closest thing that Iran has to an aircraft carrier, the Iris Shaheed Bagheri,
03:19is at the center of Iran's mobile drone threat.
03:22Referred to by WION as a mother ship,
03:25the vessel has been used by Iran to launch drones at US bases and Gulf countries
03:29from the moment that the US campaign against Iran began.
03:31Like the Iris Makran, the Iris Shaheed Bagheri started life as a commercial ship
03:36that Iran converted into a warship,
03:38which perhaps gives us an idea of why Iran's navy isn't all the country's regime needed to be.
03:44What we've seen over the past 48 hours is what weapons built for war can do
03:48when they target commercial ships converted for war.
03:50The UK Defence Journal adds that the Iris Shaheed Bagheri
03:54has also been converted to launch and retrieve helicopters,
03:57making it an even bigger threat than its drone usage implies.
04:00But now it's gone.
04:02I guess you could say it's the first aircraft carrier to be sunk since World War II,
04:06Kapi Ami says wryly in his coverage of the US blitz of Iran's naval assets.
04:10That might be a little bit of a stretch,
04:12at least when comparing the Iris Shaheed Bagheri to US carriers,
04:15such as the USS Abraham Lincoln,
04:17which has been playing a key role in this story.
04:19But the warship was among Iran's best and its loss will sting
04:22because it means that the country's strategy of unleashing drones
04:25against America's bases and vessels has just taken a massive hit.
04:29Already reeling, Iran's regime would have been wondering
04:32how it could get any worse during the 48 hours of destruction that the US unleashed.
04:36It could get worse, and it did.
04:38The Telegraph explains, reporting,
04:40US forces have also mostly destroyed the headquarters of the Iranian naval fleet
04:44in the port of Bandar Abbas,
04:46while Ali Shamkani, an admiral in Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard Corps, IRGC,
04:50has been killed in an Israeli airstrike.
04:53So Iran has lost its entire fleet in the Gulf of Oman.
04:56Its naval headquarters has been devastated,
04:58and one of its top admirals is six feet under.
05:01This isn't just bad for Iran, it's historically bad.
05:04And there will be Iranians of a certain age
05:06who will feel a massive sense of deja vu right now.
05:09Iran has been here before,
05:10watching on helplessly as the US crippled the country's entire fleet.
05:14This has to feel like Operation Praying Mantis,
05:17only with a major twist that we'll explain if you stick with us.
05:20During the late 1970s and into the 80s,
05:23Iran made a habit of attacking the US.
05:261979 saw Iranian revolutionaries take 52 Americans hostage,
05:30holding them for 444 days.
05:32The US launched the Desert One rescue mission,
05:35which failed catastrophically,
05:37and left eight US service members dead.
05:39In 1983, an Iranian suicide bomber killed 241 US Marines and sailors in Beirut.
05:45And four years later,
05:47the US experienced more Middle East humiliation
05:49when an Iraqi jet attacked the USS Stark,
05:53killing 37 US sailors.
05:55Then came April 18th, 1988.
05:58Operation Praying Mantis was launched.
06:00And in a matter of hours,
06:01the US destroyed a pair of Iranian oil platforms,
06:04a missile boat, two frigates, and three armed speedboats.
06:07In a matter of hours, half of Iran's navy had been crippled
06:10in what was the worst blow delivered in modern times to a navy
06:13that had existed since the first Persian Empire over 2,500 years ago.
06:18Note the word, was.
06:20Operation Praying Mantis will feel like a picnic
06:22compared to what just happened to Iran's navy.
06:25Now here's the twist.
06:26While older Iranians will be feeling a sense of deja vu over what just happened,
06:30they'll also be asking themselves how it happened at all.
06:33Iran has been preparing for this type of fight with the United States
06:35ever since Operation Praying Mantis.
06:38That single day led to a complete rewrite of Iranian naval doctrine
06:41to ensure that nothing like the 1980s embarrassment would ever happen again.
06:45They came up with a plan to overwhelm American ships
06:48with swarms of fast attack boats, Kapiami explains, adding.
06:51They planned to fire land-based anti-ship missiles at US forces.
06:55They had a whole strategy of using their submarines to ambush US vessels.
06:59Knowing that it couldn't stack up to the US on the pure naval firepower front,
07:03Iran had developed a layered and asymmetric strategy
07:06that was supposed to see its fast attack boats slip in and out of range,
07:10delivering shots as they went,
07:11all while Iran's submarines and missiles pelted anything that the US sent Iran's way.
07:16But nothing went according to Iran's plan.
07:18And the reason why is that Iran had been preparing for an attack like Operation Praying Mantis,
07:23and the US delivered something entirely different.
07:25But before we go deeper into that,
07:27if this is the kind of insight you want more of,
07:29make sure you're subscribed to The Military Show.
07:31We break it down like this every single week.
07:34Iran's biggest problem during America's 48-hour blitz of its navy
07:37was that it never saw the particular tactics that the US used coming.
07:41A naval doctrine created in the 1990s to counter the type of threat
07:45that ruined Iran's navy in the late 80s was never going to work.
07:48Iran had planned for what amounted to a ship-to-ship fight,
07:51which is where its fast attack boats would have a chance to excel.
07:54The Iranian regime thought its navy would be able to confine
07:58the much larger US ships in constricted waters,
08:00such as the Strait of Hormuz, which we'll be covering in a few minutes.
08:04Stuck in those waters, America's ships would be sitting ducks
08:07for the missiles launched from the fast boats,
08:09along with torpedoes fired by submarines
08:11and drones launched from Iran's makeshift aircraft carriers.
08:14But by 2026, the US knew what Iran was going to do.
08:18Persistent drone coverage combined with other forms of intelligence
08:21meant that the US knew where Iran's boats were at all times.
08:24Iranian warships haven't been able to get close
08:26to what the US has sent to the Persian Gulf region,
08:28because military tech, as surprising as this appears to have been for Iran,
08:32has advanced since the 1990s.
08:34So has America's strategy.
08:37Iran ended up bringing a knife to a gunfight,
08:39and the US said,
08:40screw you, America wasn't about to play the fast boat game.
08:43Its strategy was simple and utterly devastating.
08:47Ruin Iran's fleet using Tomahawk missiles launched from so far away
08:50that Iran's entire naval strategy wouldn't be able to make it out of port.
08:55The US used the anti-ship missiles that Iran was expecting it to use
08:58during Operation Praying Mantis.
09:00But in 2026, as part of Operation Epic Fury,
09:03the US unleashed Tomahawk cruise missiles at Iran's navy.
09:07Those missiles have a much longer standoff range
09:09than anything that Iran expected the US to use,
09:12which means the warships and platforms used to launch them
09:14never get within range of Iran's warships.
09:17The Iris Makran was a casualty of this very strategy,
09:20as Tomahawk missiles launched from hundreds of miles away
09:23slammed into the ship,
09:24one after the other and in such rapid succession
09:27that whatever defenses Iran had loaded into the vessel
09:29never had a chance to stop what the US unleashed.
09:33Those Tomahawks were likely launched by the Ali-Burk-class destroyers
09:36that Iran expected to be getting up close and personal with its fast attack boats.
09:40And with their 1,600 kilometer or around 1,000 mile range,
09:44those missiles were the only thing that Iran's idling warships saw
09:48before they were destroyed.
09:49Iran was waiting for America's warships to arrive
09:52so that it could put its naval doctrine into practice.
09:54What it got was a horde of powerful missiles,
09:56and Iran's sinking navy never even saw the ships that fired them.
10:00Then there was the follow-up.
10:02Max Afterburner explains in his examination
10:04of America's 48 hours of epic fury, stating,
10:07With Iran's navy basically being a pincushion at this point,
10:10soaking up these Tomahawk missiles,
10:12F-35s followed up, likely with J-DAN bombs, for precision cleanup.
10:17This was a genius strategy by the US.
10:19It subverted Iran's expectations by striking Iran's warships from afar,
10:23and when those ships were already in disarray,
10:26the US got up close and personal in ways that Iran never expected.
10:29This wasn't a naval battle.
10:31It was demolition of a force that had been set up
10:33specifically to counter a type of threat that the US never intended to present,
10:37and it led to America negating every tactic that Iran had in just 48 hours.
10:42As the US Naval Institute, or USNI, reveals,
10:45the US has been geared up for Iran's naval tactics for years,
10:48which is what has led to America conducting such a destructive campaign against Iran's navy.
10:53Iran has flaunted this asymmetric naval force of missile,
10:56midget submarines, naval mines, and anti-ship missile batteries
10:59in its threats to shut down the Strait of Hormuz in previous years.
11:02American naval forces in the region have been geared against these swarm threats,
11:06including hell-fire-armed Seahawk helicopters aboard Abraham Lincoln, USNI says.
11:11The mention of the Strait of Hormuz brings us back to what we mentioned
11:14about Iran's strategy of constricting US warships,
11:17and why it all fell apart for the regime.
11:19However, what we're now seeing may not quite be what you think you're seeing.
11:22On the surface, America's firestorm of tomahawk fury
11:25seems to be about destroying Iran from a military perspective.
11:29It isn't, at least not entirely.
11:30That's according to Dr. Andreas Boehm,
11:33who is an expert on the Middle East working out of Switzerland's University of St. Gallen.
11:37Boehm tells the Telegraph,
11:38If you compare their navy with Donald Trump's big, beautiful armada,
11:42it's more like a dwarf.
11:43He adds,
11:44It's been very much weakened by sanctions.
11:45Its material is outdated.
11:47And when you look at the Air Force, for example,
11:49mostly all the aircraft is from the Shah era and is US-built.
11:52It's really old.
11:53In other words,
11:54Iran is nowhere near as strong as it presents itself to be,
11:57whether that's on the naval or aerial fronts.
12:00So what the US just pulled off wasn't really about weakening Iran's military,
12:04merely because that military and its navy never truly presented a threat to the US in the first place.
12:08What America's 48 hours of strikes are really all about
12:12is making sure that the Strait of Hormuz can be reopened as quickly as possible
12:16after Iran tried to shut up shop in the wake of the initial hours of Operation Epic Fury.
12:21The US needs that strait to stay open, as does most of the rest of the world.
12:25And the reason why is that the Strait of Hormuz is among the most important transit routes.
12:30Iran may not be capable of presenting much of a kinetic threat to the US, Bohm declares.
12:34But what they are capable of is asymmetric warfare,
12:37and we can see this in the Strait of Hormuz,
12:39where insurance prices have skyrocketed
12:41and companies are refraining from sending their ships through.
12:43On the crude oil front, The Guardian reports that about 20% of all crude oil shipments
12:49have to pass through the Strait of Hormuz at some point.
12:51About 12.5% of all the oil used by countries on the American continents
12:55transits through the strait,
12:57which is dwarfed by the 45.7% of oil that China receives from tankers
13:02that sail through the Strait of Hormuz.
13:03This single passage of water is a multi-billion dollar industry,
13:07and Iran has been trying to take advantage of that fact
13:09by using its navy to lean on the one piece of leverage that it has in this entire conflict.
13:14Ebrahim Jabari, who is a senior advisor to the Commander-in-Chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps,
13:19made that abundantly clear on March 2nd when he said,
13:22The strait is closed.
13:24If anyone tries to pass,
13:25the heroes of the Revolutionary Guard and the regular navy will set those ships ablaze.
13:30Jabari has also claimed that Iran will start attacking oil pipelines in the coming day,
13:34and he claims that the price of oil will reach $200 per barrel.
13:38This is an obvious grandstand,
13:40but there is a seed of legitimacy to these claims,
13:42given Iran's control over the Strait of Hormuz.
13:44However, maintaining that control requires warships,
13:47even if they are just the fast attack boats that Iran deploys.
13:50The US has just taken those ships out of the equation.
13:54Still, Iran's attempts to blockade the Strait of Hormuz have been successful up to this point.
13:58Kappi Army says that,
13:59though some ships are going dark and trying to pass through,
14:02total transits via the strait are down by 80%.
14:04This has always been their greatest leverage, geopolitically speaking,
14:08to inflict maximum pain on global markets, Kappi Army adds.
14:12By taking away that leverage,
14:13the US also takes away the last scrap of hope that Iran had
14:16that it would come out on top in the war.
14:18Not that you would know that if you listen to Iran's propagandists.
14:22They've already claimed that Iran unleashed a hailstorm of ballistic missiles
14:25against the USS Abraham Lincoln,
14:27which is a claim that the US quickly debunked
14:30by releasing photographs of that aircraft carrier still very much in operation.
14:33Iran has also unleashed around 400 missiles and 1,000 drones
14:37against Gulf states such as Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
14:41However, as Kappi Army points out,
14:43this seemingly impressive number is actually far below
14:45what Iran unleashed in the wake of Operation Midnight Hammer
14:48in the summer of 2025,
14:50which saw the US and Israel take out much of Iran's nuclear infrastructure.
14:54It's all starting to feel like what we're seeing right now
14:56is the dying gasp of a regime that is trying to project power
14:59as everything that it's built falls apart.
15:02The Iranian naval doctrine didn't work.
15:04Scratch that, Iran's naval doctrine was so catastrophically flawed
15:07that it didn't account for the possibility
15:09the US might use anything other than anti-ship missiles
15:12to attack the Iranian fleet.
15:14As soon as the US changed just one piece of strategy
15:17that Iran expected it to use,
15:19Iran's warships were toast.
15:20And to make matters worse for Iran,
15:22the US is just getting started.
15:23That's according to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio,
15:27who spoke to reporters on March 2nd
15:29to say that what Iran is dealing with now
15:31is nothing compared to what's coming.
15:33The hardest hits are yet to come from the US military,
15:36Rubio declared,
15:37adding that the US has done what it's done so far
15:39to destroy the imminent threat that Iran posed.
15:42Now we're seeing fronts opening up all over the Middle East
15:45as Iran's proxies, such as the Houthis, go on the attack.
15:48But for Iran's regime,
15:49the damage has already been done to a navy
15:52that was expected to put up far more of a fight than it has.
15:55Iran thought it knew what was coming from the US.
15:57In just 48 hours,
15:59the US shattered Iran's naval doctrine,
16:01and it's well on the way to stripping away
16:03one piece of leverage that Iran has in this fight.
16:05And deep in the heart of Moscow,
16:07there is one man who will be watching everything
16:09that is happening with increasing levels of distress.
16:11Russian President Vladimir Putin knows
16:13that the collapse of Iran's regime
16:15spells bad things for Russia.
16:17And to find out why,
16:18check out our video,
16:19where we dive into what started the fight
16:21between the US and Iran,
16:22and what it means for Russia.
16:24And if you enjoyed this video,
16:25be sure to subscribe to The Military Show
16:27so you never miss anything that we post.
16:29And thank you as always for watching.
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