Their air defense, Air Force, Navy, and Leadership is/are gone.

[sitifan]

Their air defense, Air Force, Navy, and Leadership is gone. They want to talk. I said “Too Late!”
Source: https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/ira...e-trump-on-irans-military-leadership-11163955

Can I use 'are' instead of 'is' in the above passage?

 

[emsr2d2]

It's not that you just "can". You should. The original is wrong.

 

[max1987martin]

Their air defense, Air Force, Navy, and Leadership is gone. They want to talk. I said “Too Late!”
Source: https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/ira...e-trump-mcdvoice-on-irans-military-leadership-11163955

Can I use 'are' instead of 'is' in the above passage?

Hello, @sitifan

Yes—you can use “are”, and in fact it’s usually the better choice in that sentence.

Here’s why:

The subject is a list: “Their air defense, Air Force, Navy, and leadership”. That’s multiple items, so it’s treated as a plural subject, which normally takes “are”:

Their air defense, Air Force, Navy, and leadership are gone.

Using “is” would only sound natural if you were treating the whole list as a single combined entity (like one unified system), but that’s less common and can feel slightly off in this context.

 

[emsr2d2]

@max1987martin Please correct your profile information. You've given Fiji as your current location but that doesn't match your digital footprint. For now, you've been placed in moderation. Until your profile information is corrected, any future posts won't be approved by a moderator.