The Pentagon has strongly pushed back on reporting that it is trying to downplay the number and severity of American casualties sustained in the Iran war after an attack in Jordan resulted in the deaths of two, and possibly three, U.S. service members.
Last Friday, Iran targeted Muwaffaq Salti Air Base, a U.S. military base in Jordan. Two U.S. service members — identified on Monday morning as 1st Lt. Tyler James Feehan, 25, and Pvt. Isabella Gonzales, 19 — were killed, while the remains of a third unidentified individual were found. Four others were hospitalized but have since been released.
Recommended Stories
Shortly after U.S. Central Command announced the fatalities, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said on social media, “Godspeed, heroes. Their sacrifice only stiffens our resolve.”
He and Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have not briefed the media since May 5, more than a month before the U.S. and Iran signed the memorandum of understanding, which has since collapsed.
TRUMP VOWS IRAN WILL ‘PAY’ FOR KILLING US TROOPS. WHAT COMES NEXT?
This was not the first time there were American casualties in Jordan in recent weeks. Three other Iranian strikes in Jordan injured dozens of U.S. service members, the New York Times reported on Monday, which top Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell pushed back on shortly thereafter.
“The Department of War rejects these baseless and malicious accusations of hiding injury numbers as outright lies from partisan hacks at the New York Times who are desperate to smear America’s military and its leadership,” Parnell said. “Claims of concealment are fabrications meant to further distress the American people in the wake of three service members killed in action. Disgusting behavior, even for the New York Times.”
In a subsequent social media post, Parnell said nearly 100 service members were injured in Iranian attacks since July 7, 96% of whom experienced minor injuries and have since returned to duty. July 7 is the date cited by Trump in a letter to Congress notifying them of a return to hostilities against Iran, which restarts the 60-day clock to use the military without congressional approval.
President Donald Trump and Hegseth have for months touted the military’s efforts to destroy Iran’s military, nuclear program, and its ballistic missile and one-way attack drone arsenal, though they clearly maintain some level of capabilities because they are still carrying out successful counterattacks.
“Unlike the endless wars of the past that dragged on for years and for decades with little to show for it, Operation Epic Fury has delivered a decisive military result in just weeks,” Hegseth said in a press briefing on April 24. “Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, as the president has pointed out, all took years, decades, vague missions, shifting sands, little to show for it.”
The Defense Casualty Analysis System is a publicly available department-run database tracking U.S. military casualties. As of July 17, prior to the Jordan strike, it said 427 service members had been injured during the war, though it does not differentiate based on the severity of the injuries. The tally is higher by virtue of the attack at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base.
Another U.S. service member was killed over the weekend in Iraq, during a controlled detonation of unexploded ordnance from a downed Iranian one-way attack drone. The three, or possibly four, service members killed over the last couple of days raise the death toll in the war to 17 and possibly 18.
Trump said on Monday, “Every time Iran kills an American Soldier they will pay for that killing many times over! This directive has been passed on to Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Daniel Caine, and every Leader in the Military.”
His threat shows the cyclical pattern that can emerge in a war; the U.S. continues its strikes on Iran over its refusal to allow ships to pass through the strait freely, and they then retaliate, and if they kill American service members, the U.S. faces key questions about whether to escalate the conflict after the loss of life.
The first U.S. fatalities in the war occurred in the early hours at the Port of Shuaiba in Kuwait, in which six service members were killed in an Iranian drone attack. Survivors of the attack argued they did not have adequate air defenses in place to thwart Iranian drone and ballistic missile attacks, contradicting Hegseth’s public comments that it was “a squirter” that made “its way through” air defense systems.
The U.S. military has intensified its strikes against Iran over the month of July, following continued Iranian attacks against commercial ships transiting the waterway off its coast, including the Strait of Hormuz. They have carried out daily strikes for more than a week now, representing the most intense period of U.S. bombing since before Trump announced the ceasefire agreement on April 7.
Trump said as it commenced that Iran’s efforts to acquire a nuclear weapon were the primary basis for initiating the war, though the newfound focal point has been over the Strait of Hormuz. The vital waterway off Iran’s coasts connects the Gulf countries to the Gulf of Oman, and roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil would transit the strait before the war began. Iran began threatening vessels going through the waterway.
Iran maintains that it controls the strait and ships should have to pay to sail through it, which goes against the long-held freedom-of-navigation doctrine.
Hegseth and Caine are expected to appear in front of the Senate Appropriations Committee on Tuesday afternoon to testify about the president’s supplemental funding request, though they will likely face numerous questions about the war.
“The goal will be to go through the line items of the supplemental request and administration’s justifications for them,” a spokesperson for the committee told the Washington Examiner.
Last month, the White House submitted a supplemental budget proposal to Congress that called for $67 billion for the Pentagon to cover the cost of the war.
Of the $67 billion intended for the Department of War, $21 billion will be for munitions, though it did not specify how much of that would go to which specific munitions; $12.1 billion for classified programs; $17.3 billion for operational costs; $5.1 billion for cybersecurity and autonomy; $4 billion for airborne moving target indication and space data network backbone; $2.4 billion for drones, and $1.5 billion for fuel costs. The supplemental also includes a $1.2 billion request for “administration priorities,” but did not provide any context.
TRUMP SAYS US TROOP DEATHS ‘A SHAME’ BUT NECESSARY TO PREVENT IRANIAN NUKE
The Pentagon’s acting comptroller, Jay Hurst, testified before Congress in May that the war cost $29 billion at the time. He did not share an updated figure during his confirmation hearing earlier this month. The figure does not account for the damage done to U.S. military bases and related repairs, he said, because there is a possibility that host countries could contribute financially.
Iran has targeted several U.S. bases across the Middle East, most notably in the Gulf countries near Iran, such as Kuwait, Qatar, and Bahrain, though the administration has been very quiet about the damage caused in those attacks. Additionally, the Iranians have been able to damage or destroy at least 42 U.S. aircraft during Operation Epic Fury, a Congressional Research Service report from May revealed, though that number is also likely higher now.
