US Central Command shared an update Wednesday on it’s miilitary campaign against Iran, which it has dubbed “Operation Epic Fury.”

The war began more than three weeks ago. Here are some fast facts about the US military’s actions in the region:

• US forces struck more than 10,000 military targets.
• The military destroyed 92 percent of the Iranian Navy’s largest vessels.
• Iran’s drone and missile launch rates are down by more than 90 percent.
• US forces damaged or destroyed over two-thirds of Iran’s missile, drone and naval production facilities and shipyards.

Ophir Falk, foreign policy adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, remains skeptical about Iran wanting a peace deal.

“Well, Iran always lies. We’ve learned that they always lie,” Falk told CNN.

Iran’s foreign minister said on state-run TV that Tehran has “no intention” of holding direct talks with the US.

Abbas Araghchi said while messages had been exchanged through mediators, it “does not mean negotiations” with the US were ongoing.

US President Donald Trump has said high oil prices “didn’t matter” to him in the decision to begin striking Iran more than three weeks ago.

“I thought it would be much worse. I thought that the energy prices, oil prices would go up higher. I thought the stock market would go somewhat lower, but it didn’t matter to me.

“Short term, what we had to do is get rid of the cancer. We had to cut out the cancer. The cancer was Iran with a nuclear weapon, and we’ve cut it out”, Trump said during a speech Wednesday night local time.

Iran’s regime has fomented instability across the Middle East for decades. It has killed Americans and many other Westerners, run Hezbollah in Lebanon, and backed Hamas in Gaza.

And yet the global perspective is that the war, which is already hobbling global fuel supplies and will have far greater economic consequences, is all the fault of America and Israel.

Read more from Sam Kiley…

President Donald Trump said during a speech Wednesday night local time the US is “decimating” Iran.

“They’ve got no Navy, they’ve got no anything”, Trump said.

Iran has told intermediaries that Lebanon must be included in any ceasefire agreement with the United States and Israel, sources have said, linking an end of the war with a halt to Israel’s offensive on Hezbollah.

Iran’s Press TV cited an Iranian official as saying Tehran wanted any deal to secure an end to the war both on Iran and other “resistance groups” in the region.

The six regional sources said Tehran had informed mediators as early as mid-March that it sought a deal that would also stop Israel’s attacks on Hezbollah.

The Lebanese armed group opened fire on Israel on March 2 in solidarity with Tehran, triggering an Israeli air and ground campaign in Lebanon.

Donald Trump has said that Iran wants to make a deal “so badly” but fears being killed by their own people and by the United States.

“We settled eight wars people sort of forget, and we’re winning another one. I tell you, we’re winning so big. Nobody has ever seen anything like we’re doing in the Middle East with Iran.

“And they are negotiating, by the way, and they want to make a deal so badly, but they’re afraid to say it, because they figure they’ll be killed by their own people.

“They’re also afraid they’ll be killed by us.There’s never been head of a country that wanted that job less than being the head of Iran.”

He went on that nobody wants to be the supreme leader of Iran.

Russia sought to blackmail the United ​States by offering to stop sharing military intelligence with Iran if, in return, Washington would cut off Ukraine from its intelligence data, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said ⁠on Wednesday.

Zelensky, who said on Monday that Ukraine’s military intelligence has “irrefutable” evidence that Russia is continuing to provide intelligence to Iran, told Reuters he had seen the data but provided no ⁠further details.