How many U.S. servicemembers have died in Operation Epic Fury, the current campaign against Iran? Well, that seems to be a tricky question to answer this week.
President Donald Trump said this week that the total was up to 18, and the Defense Casualty Analysis System showed that same number Wednesday. Then, the number went down to 14, where it remained as of Friday. What happened?
According to a report from The New York Times, three military officials who “described sensitive internal discussions on the condition of anonymity,” said the Trump administration decided to remove four service members killed over this past weekend. Those deaths – three in Jordan and one in northern Iraq – were removed “because their deaths occurred after President Trump declared a cease-fire in the war in April,” said the Times, citing the officials.
“That reasoning seemed rather absurd on its face, which is probably why a Pentagon spokesperson told the newspaper the website would soon be fixed,” said Steve Benen in an MS Now blog post on the issue published Friday.
In a Thursday X post, Pentagon chief spokesman, Sean Parnell alleged that the Times’ article was “one of the worst instances of the Fake News media manufacturing lies out of thin air for absolutely no reason at all but to cause distress among the American people.”
He went on to say that the Pentagon’s press office gave the outlet an off-the-record phone call “explaining in detail that the site errors on the Defense Casualty Analysis System (DCAS) were due to a temporary data disruption,” that Parnell said was being resolved in coordination with Military Services. However, Parnell did not include details of what the “temporary data disruptions on the Defense Casualty Analysis System (DCAS) website,” were or what caused them in the post.
“The Department attempted to explain the anomalies to the New York Times ahead of publication, but given their lack of knowledge in this area, they proceeded to write a non-story that will be fixed imminently,” he said. “We remain committed to ensuring the utmost accuracy of all casualty reporting.”
While the Times’ reported that the three military sources attributed the lowered death count to recent deaths not being counted due to the ceasefire, that ceasefire effectively ended earlier this month. In fact, CBS News noted “the four service members were killed about one week after President Trump notified Congress in a letter on July 10 that the ceasefire had ended and military action had resumed on July 7.”
Now, “Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee urged Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to provide ‘a full and accurate accounting’ of all U.S. troops killed or wounded in the war,” the Times reported. It also noted that the Pentagon has not provided much information about the U.S. military strategy or troop casualties since the ceasefire collapsed. As of Friday. The DCAS site showed 420 total casualties related to Operation Epic Fury, though CBS News said it listed 482 earlier this week.
“The administration seems to have a real hard time being honest about what is going on – not just about casualties, but about the whole war in general,” said retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, who commanded U.S. forces in Europe at the start of Mr. Trump’s first term, as quoted by the Times.
He said that downplaying deaths indicates an unwillingness to learn from mistakes. The Times also noted that Trump and Hegseth have publicly laid the blame for the deaths of 13 American service members in a suicide attack in Kabul in 2021 on former President Joe Biden and members of his administration.
A Friday press release from the Department of War touted 13 consecutive nights of strikes against Iran and it said that 50,000 U.S. servicemembers are currently operating across the Middle East. At the same time, Americans’ support for the military action in Iran continues to be weak, especially as national average gas prices again reached more than $4 per gallon. Support for the war has never quite been popular, but Audacy has previously reported on Hegseth’s alleged desire to keep it going.
“The Defense Department has said that disclosing Iranian strikes on bases where U.S. troops are housed would compromise operational security,” according to the Times. It also said the Pentagon withheld information about three Iranian strikes in Jordan last week that injured dozens of U.S. servicemembers, citing anonymous sources and added that Parnell “acknowledged that the number of U.S. military casualties since July 7 had risen to nearly 100.”
“According to the Congressional Research Service, when an active-duty service member dies, the service ‘is required to complete a form (DD 1300 Report of Casualty) that includes circumstances related to death,’ and that information is then entered into the Defense Casualty database,” said CBS News this week. Meanwhile, the Trump administration said that there is not the same requirement for injuries.
CBS News also reported that the “names of the fallen” under Operation Epic Fury only lists the names of 13 of the deceased service members. It “reached out to the Navy, which has a ‘pending death’ on the site in July. If confirmed, that would bring the death total to 14,” and added that the Navy identified Cmdr. Gabriel Edwards as missing following a helicopter’s emergency landing in the Arabian Sea on July 1.
