Trump Administration Playing Games With Iran War Casualties

Photo: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

Over the past week, four more American servicemembers were killed in the recently resumed Iran war. Three U.S. Army soldiers died in an Iranian attack on a U.S. base in Jordan last Friday, and on Sunday, another Army soldier was killed during the disposal of a downed Iranian drone in Iraq. That raised the total of number U.S. war dead to 18, which is what the Pentagon’s casualties website listed as of Wednesday. A day later, the total on the website suddenly dropped to 14, and when the New York Times investigated the change, it received conflicting answers as to why it had occurred. Three military officials said it was intentional, citing how the deaths happened after the now-aborted April cease-fire. A Pentagon press official said it was a mistake, citing “temporary data disruptions.” On Friday, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell similarly blamed “site errors.” It’s not at all clear why unnamed Pentagon officials said one thing and Pentagon press personnel said something different.

The website discrepancy is just the latest conspicuous example of what appears to be an ongoing effort by the Pentagon and the Trump administration to downplay American casualties and other high costs of this very unpopular war.

On Monday, the Times reported the Pentagon had not disclosed recent Iranian attacks on U.S. bases, which injured dozens of servicemembers, and said U.S. military officials had dismissed the need to do so, citing operational security. Parnell attacked the Times and alleged it made “baseless and malicious” accusations for partisan reasons, insisting any “claims of concealment” were “fabrications meant to further distress the American people.” Not long after, he confirmed there had been nearly 100 U.S. casualties since the fighting resumed but said the “vast majority” of those injured suffered only “mild concussions” and the other injuries included “everything from minor sprained ankles during routine training to incidents entirely unrelated to combat operations.”

Increasingly during this war, the most credible information available continues to come from independent sources, and the U.S. government is disclosing less and less.

President Trump, meanwhile, has explicitly downplayed the casualty numbers, while appearing to put pro-war words into the mouths of those killed.

On Tuesday, he bragged about how few war deaths there have been compared with other wars and presidents. And after he attended the dignified transfer at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware on Wednesday, Trump said of the killed servicemembers that “all of them said very strongly, ‘We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon.’”

The Trump administration’s shadiness doesn’t apply just to American casualties but also to the ones it inflicted.

This week, Iranian families held additional funerals for 32 of the 120 children killed in the February 28 U.S. airstrikes on an elementary school in the southern Iranian city of Minab. The funerals were for children whose partial remains were only found and identified using DNA testing after a deeper excavation of the site. All the families could bury this week were small body fragments wrapped in white cloth. For one of the victims, no remains have been found at all. Makan Nasiri, a 7-year-old boy, might have been directly struck by one of the two U.S. Tomahawk cruise missiles that hit the school. They found only his shoe and part of his backpack.

All publicly available evidence indicates the U.S. was responsible for the school strike, a result of faulty intelligence and outdated targeting information. That was the conclusion of multiple reports, investigations, and analyses, including from the New York Times, CNN, the Associated Press, Just Security, Amnesty International, and, as recently as July 16, Forensic Architecture/Sky News. It’s also the conclusion of U.S. investigators, according to various reports.

But nearly five months later, the Trump administration still won’t acknowledge U.S. responsibility for the strike and the deaths, and people like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth continue to dodge questions when reporters attempt to hold them accountable. They still say they’re waiting for the results of the investigation. Trump has also suggested Iran might have been behind the strikes and claimed the cruise missiles might not have been American. In a Fox News interview two weeks ago, Trump suggested that images showing Tomahawk-missile fragments at the site might have been AI-generated and said, “I don’t think anybody’s gonna ever be able to say what happened.” When it comes to his administration, that may as well be a promise.

See All