Iran war: Are U.S. casualties being covered up?

Bringing home the dead — The latest attempt by the Trump administration to obscure the human cost of its unpopular war

(Image credit: Getty)

The Trump administration has found a novel way to limit the U.S. death toll in the Iran war, said Jack Crosbie in Rolling Stone: Claim that “some deaths don’t count.” Last month, the names of four service members killed by Iranian strikes in mid-July suddenly vanished from the Pentagon’s official list of war dead, lowering the total from 18 to 14. U.S. officials gave differing explanations for the change, from benign “temporary data disruptions” to the claim that the troops killed in Jordan and Iraq didn’t actually die in the war with Iran since “Operation Epic Fury” technically stopped when President Trump struck a temporary ceasefire with Tehran in April. Never mind that neither side ever ceased firing. After Senate Democrats and veterans groups protested the disappearance, the names of the four service members reappeared on the Pentagon website—but under a different category for “Overseas Operations,” which includes only those killed and injured since July 7, when fighting fully reignited.

This is only the latest attempt by the administration to obscure the human cost of its unpopular war, said Edith Olmsted in The New Republic. In March, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth dismissed an Iranian drone strike on a tactical operations center in Kuwait as a “squirter,” and the Pentagon said just five troops were seriously wounded. In fact, dozens of soldiers suffered injuries “including burns, shrapnel wounds, and brain trauma.” And when the Pentagon restored the four dead soldiers to its online database, it also quietly upped the number of wounded personnel by more than 140— pushing total U.S. casualties in the war above 600. Trump last month tried to put a positive spin on the casualty count, said Joe Lancaster in Reason, favorably comparing in an online post the conflict’s “4 months, 18 dead” with the thousands of Americans killed in multiyear wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. That may be true, but “American soldiers are still dead as a direct result of the conflict he helped instigate.”

This is predictable behavior from Trump, said David A. Graham in The Atlantic. He “has frequently treated the military as a political prop” and, according to his first-term chief of staff John Kelly, called U.S. troops who died in wars “suckers” and “losers.” Trump and Hegseth seemed to think that the American public are suckers as well, and thought their accounting tricks would prevent Iran war deaths from becoming a political liability. But that plan backfired and has succeeded only in drawing attention to the 18 dead Americans. “The administration sought to hide the war with Iran; instead, it showed the painful and growing costs.”