Pentagon suddenly lowers reported US troop death toll from Iran war: New York Times

The Pentagon abruptly lowered the number of US troops it reports were killed during the Iran war on its website from 18 to 14, with military officials and a Pentagon spokesman providing conflicting explanations for the change, The New York Times reported Thursday.

The Times report said that on Wednesday, the Pentagon listed a total of 18 American service members who had been killed during the war, but by Thursday, the Defense Department had reduced the number of troops killed on its casualties website to 14.

Three military officials told the Times that “one reason behind the change was that the Trump administration decided to remove four service members killed this past weekend from the list (3 in Jordan, 1 in northern Iraq) because their deaths occurred after President (Donald) Trump declared a ceasefire in the war in April.”

However, the acting press secretary for the Pentagon, Joel Valdez, cited a different reason, telling the Times that “temporary data disruptions” contributed to the change in the number of deaths reported on the website and suggested that the information would be “quickly fixed.”

Trump himself continued to refer to the higher number of US troop deaths during a press briefing Thursday, comparing the toll from other American wars to the war against Iran, saying that even one death “is too many, but it’s 18.”

According to the Times, since the ceasefire collapsed, “the Pentagon has provided little information about the American military strategy and has been slow to release information about troops’ injuries,” saying that the last major Pentagon briefing on the war was held in early May.

The Defense Department previously said that disclosing Iranian strikes on bases where US troops are housed “would compromise operational security.”

The lack of information being disseminated from the department falls in line with information given to the Times from sources within the Trump administration who said the “Pentagon withheld information about three Iranian strikes last week in Jordan that injured dozens of US service members and damaged several helicopters.”

After an Iranian strike in Jordan on Friday killed three soldiers, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, Sean Parnell, acknowledged that the number of US military casualties since July 7 had risen to nearly 100, according to the Times report.

Defense Department officials said they are bound by law to report troop deaths but not injuries, according to the Times. But critics, including Democratic senators, have said that the Trump administration is obligated to inform the public about the conduct of the war.

“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 in a statement.

Hodges is a veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars who commanded US forces in Europe at the beginning of Trump’s first term in office.

Hodges said that downplaying deaths during war indicated “an unwillingness or inability to aggressively learn from mistakes.”

According to the Times, the issue of troop deaths is significant because “both President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth…have repeatedly said that their predecessors, President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III, as well as Vice President Kamala Harris, were personally responsible for the deaths of 13 American service members in a suicide attack in Kabul in 2021.”

“These people shouldn’t have died,” Trump said on a podcast in 2024. “They died because of Biden and because of Kamala. They died just like if they pulled the trigger.”

In its casualty toll for the Iran war, the Pentagon has separated the number of troops killed under fire from those killed in accidents, according to the Times’ report. As of Wednesday, its data showed that 11 service members were killed in hostilities and seven in accidents related to the war, totaling 18.

By Thursday morning, the number of deaths on the Pentagon’s site had been changed to 14, with seven classified as hostile.

Valdez referred to the changes as “site anomalies” and said they were being resolved, according to the Times.

“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,” Valdez said in an email. “We remain committed to ensuring the utmost accuracy of all casualty reporting.”