Congressional report shows 81 US aircraft destroyed, says Iran's FM

According to a report scraped by the Congressional Research Service, 81 U.S. aircraft – including fixed‑wing, rotary‑wing and unmanned systems – have been either destroyed or severely damaged since February 28 in the campaign against Iran. Abbas Araghchi posted the CRS headline on X, noting that earlier estimates placed the loss at 42. He emphasized that the actual damage is "far beyond" those numbers and accused CENTCOM of denying a senator the chance to inspect the bases that the U.S. claims are still functional. Araghchi concluded that deceptive statistics can only mask the truth temporarily.