A member of Iran's Supreme Council of Cyberspace says the country's armed forces have delivered a historic humiliation to the United States. Zarqami claimed that American aircraft carriers and bases across the region, which no state had dared attack for decades and which existed purely to project US deterrence, have been brought low on the world stage. In his telling, the strikes swept away an aura of American invulnerability that had gone unchallenged for years. The remark fits the tone hardline figures in Tehran have struck since the confrontation with Washington escalated. Officials around the establishment routinely describe attacks on US installations as proof that American power in the Middle East can be confronted directly. Whatever the military arithmetic, such statements are aimed at a domestic audience as much as at foreign governments.