The U.S. death toll in the war in Iran reached seven on Sunday after U.S. Central Command said a service member had been killed from injuries sustained in Saudi Arabia.
CENTCOM said the service member was seriously wounded and later succumbed to injuries after an attack on U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia on March 1. The command said it would not confirm the soldier’s identity until the next of kin is identified.
The latest death brings the number of American fatalities since the conflict began to seven, marking the first U.S. service member to die from wounds sustained in the fighting rather than being killed outright in the initial attacks.
Six U.S. service members were previously killed during the early days of the conflict that began Feb. 28 after a large Iranian strike on a U.S. facility in Kuwait shortly after the U.S. and Israel launched coordinated operations against Iran.
U.S. officials said those deaths occurred when an Iranian drone struck a tactical operation center housing American personnel, a part of a wave of Iranian missile and drone attacks targeting U.S. bases and allied facilities in the Middle East in retaliation for the campaign against Iran.
The six members were returned to American soil during a dignified transfer on Saturday.
The war in Iran began when U.S. and Israeli forces launched strikes on Iranian military and nuclear infrastructure, triggering a widening regional confrontation. Tehran responded by firing missiles and drones at U.S. and allied forces across the Gulf, including locations in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates.
American forces have continued operations against Iranian military targets as part of what the Pentagon has described as a broad effort to degrade Iran’s military capabilities.
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The fighting has also spilled beyond Iran’s borders, with Israeli strikes hitting Iranian-linked targets in Lebanon and continued exchanges of missiles and drones across the region.
President Donald Trump and War Secretary Pete Hegseth have remained mum on committing U.S. troops to ground combat in Iran. The possibility of soldiers being deployed to Iran reached a fever pitch on Friday when the U.S. Army canceled a training exercise for the elite 82nd Airborne Division, stationed at Fort Bragg in North Carolina.
