Trump official: US carried out 900 strikes during first 12 hours of Operation Epic Fury against Iran

The US military carried out nearly 900 strikes during the first 12 hours of Operation Epic Fury against Iran, Fox News reports, citing an unnamed US official.

The strikes were launched from the land, air and sea and included drones, all while defending against hundreds of incoming Iranian ballistic missiles, the US official says.

Iran fired about 300 missiles in the first 12 hours of fighting, which was sparked by a joint US-Israeli operation at around 9:30 a.m. local time in Tehran, the US official says.

Iran has around 2,000 long-range missiles in its arsenal and another 2,000 shorter-range missiles — both were replenished after last summer’s US and Israeli strikes, the US official tells Fox News.

The official claims Iran struck “empty warehouses” in strikes that targeted the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain, adding that none of the Iranian counterstrikes have impacted US aims in Operation Epic Fury.

The official says that the goal of the operation is to ensure that Iran no longer has the “capability to attack its neighbors: no drones, no missiles, no navy.”

The US official claims that Washington knows where Iran is stockpiling its highly enriched uranium, but that it is difficult to reach.

The official expects that the operation against Iran will last “a couple of weeks,” but that US President Donald Trump could decide to wrap it up sooner.

There are still a number of Iranian air defenses left for the US and Israel to suppress before they’ll be able to operate more freely from the Iranian skies, the US official adds.