MS NOW94%
As Iranian attacks kill more U.S. troops, Trump’s claims about Iran’s capabilities unravel 77%
By Steve Benen95%
7/20/2026, 12:21:46 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 31 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Biased Writer Voice, and Recency Bias, with Confirmation Bias as the most egregious example at 40.7% saturation with 255 hits. Analysis detected 1,821 faulty-reasoning hits from 626 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 69.1% and a BS Rank of 77% (4,730 of 20,369 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 76.80% of the article peer group.
After months in which no American troops were killed as part of the war with Iran, the news took a devastating turn in recent days: U.S.
Central Command confirmed that three American service members — two in Jordan and one in Iraq — were killed in action and one remains missing after Iranian attacks over the past few days.
Soon after, the U.S. military responded by carrying out a new round of airstrikes to “swiftly punish” Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
What’s more, The New York Times reported that shortly before the latest round of U.S. fatalities, Iran carried out other strikes against U.S. forces in Jordan that injured dozens of U.S. service members — developments that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other Trump administration officials failed to disclose.
It was against this backdrop that Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo said something on the air of surprising significance.
Maria Bartiromo questioned how Iran could still be fighting, saying she does not understand how the country retains those capabilities when Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed the U.S. “obliterated” Iran’s military.
“I don’t understand how it’s possible that Iran has the capabilities to fight this way and continue to try to lash out at Gulf countries and U.S. military bases,” the conservative host said Sunday morning, “because the U.S. has obliterated Iran’s military, and [Donald Trump] continues to reiterate that.”
I won’t speculate as to Bartiromo’s motivations, but she stumbled onto an important detail.
On the one hand, there’s the incumbent American president, who’s spent the past several weeks, if not months, assuring the world that the U.S. military, at his direction, has destroyed Iran’s military capabilities.
Indeed, less than a month ago, at an event in Pennsylvania, the Republican said in reference to Iranian leaders, “They were the bully of the Middle East, and now we’re leaving Iran with no navy, no air force, no anti-aircraft, no missile capability.”
A couple of days later, Trump similarly boasted that U.S. military operations have been so successful that Iran now has “no missile launchers.”
On the other hand, Americans see U.S. troop fatalities climbing in response to Iranian attacks.
The broader dynamic isn’t exactly complicated: Either Iran’s military is far more potent than Donald Trump seems to understand, or Trump has deliberately and wildly exaggerated the scope of the damage done by the U.S. military offensive.
During a brief Q&A with reporters on Sunday afternoon, the president was asked about the latest fatalities.
“Well, we feel very badly, but you know, those great people, those great patriots were out there fighting that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.
Iran has been very, very badly damaged.
They’ve lost everything, almost, militarily.
They’ve got very little left.
They’ve got some missiles.
They’ve got some drones.
They’ve got some manufacturing ability, not much.
We control the strait; they don’t control anything.”
But this only exaggerated the problem he created.
Trump made it sound as if these U.S. service members died in order to prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapon, but Iran wasn’t close to having a nuclear weapon before he launched the war, and according to the president’s own claims , Iran’s nuclear program was effectively destroyed last year, months before the offense he began on Feb.
28.
For that matter, as part of the same comments on Sunday afternoon, the president again made it sound as if Iran’s military capabilities barely exist, even as Iran’s military kills a growing number of Americans.
Those looking for credible assessments about the state of the war should clearly avoid the White House.
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