CENTCOM: Iran Navy Crippled, Proxy Network Cut Off

Iran’s naval forces are so degraded from recent strikes that they will require five to ten years to reconstitute, the head of U.S. Central Command told lawmakers Wednesday — and the country’s ability to sustain its regional proxy network has collapsed alongside them.

Admiral Brad Cooper, CENTCOM commander, delivered that assessment before the Senate Armed Services Committee in testimony that also revealed Iran held uranium enriched to 60 percent before the war began, a threshold he said has no civilian justification.

Navy Won’t Rebuild This Decade

Breaking Defense reported Cooper’s blunt bottom line to the committee: Iran’s navy cannot be reconstituted within the next five to ten years. The assessment covers both conventional surface assets and the irregular maritime forces — fast-attack craft, drone boats, and mine-laying capabilities — that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy has used to menace Gulf shipping lanes.

Cooper also stated that Iran is no longer capable of meaningfully supplying or financing its proxy forces across the region, per Breaking Defense. Those networks — built over decades to extend Iranian power into Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen — depended on a supply chain that required both money and physical logistics corridors that Iran can no longer sustain at scale.

The IRGC’s capacity for conventional exercises, meanwhile, has drawn scrutiny this week. An Institute for the Study of War assessment published Wednesday found the corps continuing to stage military drills even as its material position has weakened, a pattern analysts read as an attempt to project strength during peace negotiations.

60% Enrichment: “No Civilian Use”

In a separate exchange before the committee, Cooper told senators that Iran possessed uranium enriched to 60 percent prior to the start of hostilities. That figure sits well above the 3–5 percent level used in commercial power reactors and below the roughly 90 percent threshold for a weapon, but Cooper was direct about its significance.

“There is no civilian use for uranium enriched to that level,” he told the committee, according to the Middle East Monitor.

Cooper added that the war has lengthened Iran’s nuclear breakout timeline — the estimated time it would take to produce enough weapons-grade material for a device — though he did not specify the new estimate in public session. The enrichment disclosure adds weight to the ongoing dispute over nuclear verification in ceasefire talks. Vice President Vance addressed that gap earlier Wednesday, with negotiations stalled over how intrusive any inspection regime would be.

Hormuz Leverage Persists

Despite the degradation of Iran’s navy, Pentagon officials told Politico Wednesday that Tehran retains meaningful leverage over the Strait of Hormuz. The officials said Iran’s ability to threaten commercial shipping — even without a reconstituted blue-water navy — continues to give it a card to play in any peace negotiation with Washington.

The strait carries roughly 20 percent of the world’s seaborne oil. The threat does not require large warships; Iran has demonstrated it can harass tanker traffic with fast boats, naval mines, and shore-based anti-ship missiles, most of which survived the strikes that gutted its conventional fleet.

Iran underscored that leverage earlier this week when it seized a floating armoury vessel and demanded Hormuz transit compliance, a move that demonstrated residual interdiction capacity even in a degraded state. The incident complicated diplomacy and rattled commercial insurers already pricing elevated risk premiums into Gulf voyages.

Context: China’s Role and Diplomatic Pressure

The broader diplomatic picture shifted Wednesday when Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged at a summit with President Trump that Beijing would not supply arms to Iran. Xi also backed keeping the Strait of Hormuz open to international navigation, a position that aligns with Washington’s core demand but stops short of endorsing U.S. enforcement action.

Beijing’s stated neutrality matters because China is Iran’s largest oil customer and has, in the past, provided Tehran with dual-use technology and diplomatic cover at the United Nations. If the pledge holds, Iran’s options for rebuilding its degraded military — already constrained by sanctions — narrow further.

Cooper’s Senate testimony did not directly address China’s role, but his assessment of the proxy network collapse implies that the supply lines those networks depended on — which routed in part through Chinese-linked intermediaries — have been severed or severely disrupted.

What to Watch

The SASC hearing produced a cleaner picture of Iran’s military position than has been available from public sources since hostilities began. Three threads now run in parallel:

Nuclear verification. Cooper’s 60%-enrichment disclosure will press negotiators in Vienna and any back-channel forum to demand access to Iran’s declared and undeclared enrichment sites. Tehran has historically resisted cameras and inspectors at sensitive facilities.

Hormuz insurance. Commercial shipping markets will read the Pentagon’s caveat — that Hormuz leverage persists — as a signal that war-risk premiums are not going away soon, regardless of how navy-to-navy assessments read. That has direct consequences for oil prices and freight rates.

Proxy reconstitution timeline. A five-to-ten-year naval recovery window is not the same as a permanent end to Iranian regional influence. Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iranian-aligned militias in Iraq are political movements as much as they are military instruments. The question for analysts is whether money and ideology can sustain those networks without the physical resupply that Tehran can no longer provide.