On Tuesday, Trump teased that he would wind down the war with Iran in as little as two weeks despite not achieving many of his stated aims, such as \u201cfreedom for the people<\/a>\u201d of Iran, \u201ctak[ing] the oil in Iran<\/a>,\u201d and forcing Iran\u2019s \u201cunconditional surrender<\/a>.\u201d At one point, the president even declared that the war<\/a> would last \u201cas long as necessary to achieve our objective of PEACE THROUGHOUT THE MIDDLE EAST AND, INDEED, THE WORLD!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you have conflicts like this, you always have death.\u201d<\/p>\n CENTCOM has sent outdated statements on casualty numbers, meanwhile, resulting in undercounts, including a statement sent Monday from spokesperson Capt. Tim Hawkins noting that \u201cSince the start of Operation Epic Fury, approximately 303 U.S. service members have been wounded.\u201d The comment was three days old and excluded at least 15 wounded<\/a> in the Friday attack on Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia. The command did not reply to repeated requests for updated figures.<\/p>\n CENTCOM also would not provide a count of troops who have died in the region since the start of the war. An Intercept analysis puts the number at no less than 15.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is, quite obviously, a subject that [War Secretary Pete] Hegseth and the White House want to keep under major wraps,\u201d said the defense official who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to speak frankly.<\/p>\n In 2024, during the Biden administration, the Pentagon provided The Intercept with detailed chronologies of attacks on U.S. bases in the Middle East that listed the specific outpost that was attacked, the type of strike, and whether \u2014 or how many \u2014 casualties resulted, along with an aggregate count of attacks by country.<\/p>\n The Trump administration\u2019s numbers, by comparison, lack detail and clarity. The current CENTCOM casualty figures do not appear to include more than 200 sailors treated for smoke inhalation or otherwise injured due to a fire that raged aboard the USS\u00a0Gerald R. Ford before it limped off to Souda Bay, Greece, for repairs. CENTCOM did not reply to close to a dozen requests for clarification\u00a0on the casualty count and related information sent this week.<\/p>\n \u201cCENTCOM and the White House should be providing accurate and timely information on the costs and casualties involved in this war. After all, it is American taxpayers who are funding it and U.S. economic prosperity and economic wellbeing that is being undermined by it,\u201d Jennifer Kavanagh, the director of military analysis at Defense Priorities, a think tank that advocates for measured U.S. foreign policy, told The Intercept.<\/p>\n \u201cCENTCOM and the White House should be providing accurate and timely information on the costs and casualties involved in this war.\u201d<\/p>\n As the U.S. has relentlessly bombed Iran, that country has responded with\u00a0attacks on U.S. bases<\/a>\u00a0across the Middle East using ballistic missiles and drones. CENTCOM refuses to even offer a simple count of U.S. bases that have been attacked during the war. \u201cWe have nothing for you,\u201d a spokesperson told The Intercept. An analysis by The Intercept, however, finds that bases in Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and the United Arab Emirates have been targeted. \u00a0<\/p>\n On Tuesday, Hegseth said that Iran retained the ability to retaliate for U.S. strikes but that their attacks would be ineffectual. \u201cYes, they will still shoot some missiles,\u201d he said, \u201cbut we will shoot them down.\u201d On Wednesday morning, officials in Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar all reported missile or drone attacks from Iran.<\/p>\n Iranian strikes have forced U.S. troops to retreat from their bases to hotels and office buildings across the region, according to the two government officials.\u00a0The defense official was livid about the Pentagon\u2019s failure to adequately harden the bases and ridiculed Hegseth\u2019s Tuesday prayer at a Pentagon press conference. \u201cMay god watch over all of them, each day and each night. May his almighty and eternal arms of providence stretch over them and protect them,\u201d said Hegseth.<\/p>\n \u201cWhy didn\u2019t Hegseth protect them?\u201d the defense official asked. \u201cAnyone with a brain knew these attacks were coming.\u201d<\/p>\n Pentagon spokesperson Kingsley Wilson<\/a> did not respond to multiple\u00a0requests for comment.<\/p>\n We\u2019re independent of corporate interests \u2014 and powered by members. Join us. <\/p>\n Join Our Newsletter <\/p>\n Thank You For Joining! <\/p>\n \n Original reporting. Fearless journalism. Delivered to you. <\/p>\n Will you take the next step to support our independent journalism by becoming a member of The Intercept?\n <\/p>\n By signing up, I agree to receive emails from The Intercept and to the Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Use<\/a>.<\/p>\n Retired Gen. Joseph Votel, a former head of Central Command, recalled that U.S. troops in the region have faced drone attacks for at least a decade. \u201cAt that time we identified a need to protect against this threat, and it has taken far too long for the DoD to respond and provide adequate protection for our deployed troops,\u201d he told The Intercept, referencing drone attacks during the campaign against ISIS in the spring of 2016. \u201cIt was a known expectation that, if attacked, Iran would retaliate against our bases, installations, and forces, and I agree that we should have anticipated and been prepared for this inevitability.\u201d<\/p>\n Kavanagh, who previously called attention<\/a> to the vulnerability of U.S. outposts in the Middle East, echoed Votel. \u201cIt has been clear for years that the rapid proliferation of drones and cheap missiles would put U.S. bases and U.S. early detection radars in the region at risk, yet the Pentagon did little to protect them,\u201d she said. \u201cThe failure to invest in hardened infrastructure was a choice. Congress should see this failure as evidence that simply giving the Pentagon more money is not a path to national security.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe would be better off if bases across the region were closed for good,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n \u201cWe would be better off if bases across the region were closed for good.\u201d<\/p>\n In public statements, Iran\u2019s foreign minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi called out the U.S. for using civilians in nearby Arab monarchies of the Gulf Cooperative Council states as human shields<\/a>. \u201cU.S. soldiers fled military bases in GCC to hide in hotels and offices,\u201d he wrote on X last week. \u201cHotels in U.S. deny bookings to officers who may endanger customers. GCC hotels should do same.\u201d<\/p>\n Votel also expressed concern about troops using hotels and offices, noting it \u201ccould turn normal civilian infrastructure into military targets for the regime.\u201d<\/p>\n Last month, an Iranian drone strike on a hotel in Bahrain wounded two War Department employees, according to a State Department cable reviewed by the Washington Post<\/a>. CENTCOM did not respond to a request to confirm to The Intercept that those injuries stem from a March 2 attack on the Crowne Plaza hotel, a luxury property in Manama,\u00a0Bahrain\u2019s capital, but one official indicated this was likely.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Votel said that a failure to provide troops with adequate protection may handcuff U.S. operations. \u201cI think this really complicates command and control and could affect unit cohesion and effectiveness,\u201d he told The Intercept, referring to the transfer of troops to hotels and office buildings. \u201cThat said, we may not have many options if we cannot protect the military bases where they would normally be bedded down.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n At least 15 U.S. troops in the Middle East <\/a>have died<\/a> since the beginning of the Iran War, including six personnel\u00a0who were killed in a drone strike on Port Shuaiba, Kuwait<\/a>, and a soldier who died due to an \u201cenemy attack on March 1, 2026, at Prince Sultan Air Base, Saudi Arabia<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0More than 520 U.S. personnel have also been injured, including those who suffered smoke inhalation on the Ford.<\/p>\n Prior to the current war with Iran, U.S. bases in the Middle East were increasingly targeted by a mix of one-way attack drones, rockets, mortars, and close-range ballistic missiles after Israel\u2019s war in Gaza began in October 2023, most of the attacks occurring in the year following the outset of the conflict. At least 175 troops were killed or wounded in those attacks, including three service members who died in a January\u00a02024 strike<\/a>\u00a0on\u00a0Tower 22<\/a>, a facility in Jordan. Other attacks targeted al-Asad Air Base, the Baghdad Diplomatic Support Center, Camp Victory, Union III, Erbil Air Base, and Bashur Air Base in Iraq and Al-Tanf garrison, Deir ez-Zor Air Base, Mission Support Site Euphrates, Mission Support Site Green Village, Patrol Base Shaddadi, Rumalyn Landing Zone, Tell Baydar, and Tal Tamir in Syria.<\/p>\n The casualty statistics do not include contractors<\/a>, most of them foreigners who suffered non-combat injuries. Official U.S. statistics<\/a> show that there were almost 12,900 cases of injuries to contractors in the CENTCOM area of operations during 2024 alone. More than 3,700 were the most serious non-fatal injuries, including traumatic brain injuries, requiring more than seven days away from work.\u00a0Eighteen contractors were also killed, all of them in Iraq. The numbers are likely significant undercounts, but if even the fractional number of known contractor injuries is added to the tally, the casualty count for Americans and those on U.S. bases may top 13,600.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Almost 750 U.S. troops have been wounded or killed in the Middle East since October 2023, an analysis…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":47559,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1069,2774,34,1077,2775,1068,1074,1075,1076,1072,19564,2776],"class_list":{"0":"post-47558","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-iran","8":"tag-article-type-article-post","9":"tag-day-wednesday","10":"tag-iran","11":"tag-language-english","12":"tag-medium","13":"tag-page-type-article","14":"tag-partner-factiva","15":"tag-partner-smart-news","16":"tag-partner-social-flow","17":"tag-subject-national-security","18":"tag-time-18-00","19":"tag-wc-1000-1999"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116332010106371021","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47558\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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