Category: News

More American service members have died in the Middle East during the ongoing Iran war than the Pentagon has disclosed publicly, according to six U.S. officials familiar with the Defense Department’s internal casualty accounting data.

Five of the officials said there have been at least 22 military fatalities — four more than what appears in the Pentagon’s public database, known as the Defense Casualty Analysis System, or DCAS.

A sixth official, who like the others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the figures, said 23 service members have died since Feb. 28, when the Trump administration, in concert with Israel, initiated the Iran war. Not all of the undisclosed deaths are directly tied to the conflict but have involved U.S. personnel who were in the Middle East amid ongoing hostilities, this person said.

Additionally, the official said, three U.S. contractors who were based in the region have died since combat operations began.

As of Friday, the Pentagon’s DCAS database lists 18 U.S. military fatalities, including deaths caused by hostile and nonhostile action dating to the start of the Iran conflict.

Details surrounding the undisclosed deaths — including the service members’ identities, as well as when, how, and where they died — remain unclear. Officials familiar with the higher casualty number expressed frustration that the additional loss of life is not reflected in the Pentagon’s public casualty portal.

The Pentagon declined to address questions about the accounting discrepancy.

The Iran war, which polls show is deeply unpopular with the American public, has become a political liability for President Donald Trump and the Republican Party ahead of November’s midterm elections. The administration’s casualty accounting practices faced intense scrutiny earlier this year when the names of four U.S. troops who died as a result of the Iran war were briefly excluded from the Pentagon’s official tally.

The proper accounting of military fatalities has implications beyond public transparency. Whenever a U.S. service member dies, the military conducts a line of duty investigation to determine whether the death occurred while performing official duties. Those findings affect the survivor benefits for which service members’ families are eligible.

As of Friday, 14 fatalities are listed in the database as having occurred during Operation Epic Fury, the Trump administration’s name for the Iran war. Four others, reflected in a separate category called Overseas Operations, date to a July ceasefire between Washington and Tehran that later collapsed leading to the resumption of attacks.

Separately, the Pentagon has said that, since February, two U.S. service members died in the Middle East while participating in missions unrelated to the Iran war. Their deaths, which occurred at bases that have been attacked by Iranian forces, are not reflected by name in the DCAS database either.

Sgt. Devin Seibel died in Irbil, Iraq, on May 31 in a training accident, the Defense Department said in a news release. The announcement specified he was assigned to Operation Inherent Resolve, the ongoing campaign against Islamic State militants. Seibel’s name is not included among the Inherent Resolve tally in DCAS.

Maj. Sorffly Davius suffered an unspecified medical emergency in Kuwait and died on March 6. It is unclear whether his death was tied to an Iranian attack. An announcement of Davius’ death said he deployed under Operation Spartan Shield, a mission to partner with regional militaries.

More than 820 U.S. service members have been wounded in action since the Iran conflict began, the public casualty database says. Many have suffered traumatic brain injuries as a result of Iranian counterstrikes on U.S. bases throughout the Middle East.

The war has taxed the military’s stocks of precision weapons, damaged U.S. bases across the Persian Gulf, and roiled global energy markets after Tehran closed the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway for oil and fertilizer.

According to a document reviewed by the Washington Post, U.S. Central Command, which oversees operations in the Middle East, has estimated that the Iran war has cost about $43.6 billion through early September. The total includes $28 billion in munitions expended during the conflict but does not account for the damage to U.S. bases.

As the Post reported last month, several top U.S. military officials have warned Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that prolonging large-scale operations against Iran is unsustainable and risks weakening their ability to confront threats elsewhere, including the U.S. homeland.

According to a September Reuters-Ipsos poll, 28% of Americans support Trump’s approach to Iran, whereas 62% disapprove.

On Tuesday, a record seven GOP lawmakers joined Democrats and helped pass a largely symbolic measure intended to halt the war — the latest of several war powers resolutions to advance in Congress.

All war deaths and injuries are supposed to be publicly reported on the Pentagon’s public DCAS system, where the military accounts for personnel lost or injured in its conflicts.

Over the summer, when the four combat deaths were temporarily excluded from the casualty database, the Trump administration reclassified renewed hostilities with Iran as Overseas Operations instead of being tied to Operation Epic Fury.

The change, which occurred as U.S. negotiators struggled to broker a permanent peace deal with Tehran, coincided with efforts by the administration to portray the war as a success even as Iran continued to fire on American forces and continued to target shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.

Senate Democrats have pledged to investigate the Pentagon’s handling of casualty notifications if they retake the majority after the midterms.

Reps. Pat Ryan (N.Y.), Jason Crow (Colo.) and 10 other House Democrats, all of them military veterans, on Friday said they were pursuing legislation that would prevent the Pentagon from manipulating government data on troop casualties. Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D., Ill.) is leading a companion effort in the Senate.

One Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie (Ky.), moved this week to force a House vote on impeaching Hegseth over the war, alleging the defense secretary violated provisions of the War Powers Resolution of 1973 by pursuing hostilities without congressional authorization.

President Donald Trump has insisted that a 250-foot-tall triumphal arch should be built near Arlington National Cemetery, citing long-abandoned plans to construct a monument there.

Local officials, preservationists, and historians are now pushing an alternate idea: Abandon the arch and consider building the slender columns that were originally envisioned by architects and lawmakers a century ago.

“We request meaningful consideration of an alternative that more accurately reflects the spirit and intent of the 1924 McKim Mead & White design and the 1925 Act of Congress,” C. Andrew Lewis, an official in Washington’s historic preservation office, wrote in a letter to the Trump administration on Wednesday and obtained by the Washington Post.

“Specifically, we request the [National Park Service] to evaluate design concepts consisting of two columns that truly frame, rather than limit the historic view corridor.”

The administration has been consulting with D.C.’s and Virginia’s historic preservation offices as part of a required federal preservation process before building the new structure.

Other officials and advocates have raised the idea of erecting columns, rather than a large arch, including in a meeting last week with National Park Service officials overseeing the planned project.

The requests represent advocates’ latest effort to delay or prevent the construction of the new arch, which has been widely opposed in Washington. It is unlikely, however, that Trump would agree to discard his plans for a large triumphal arch. The president has been attached to the idea of an arch since being privately pitched on the project and publicly announcing it last year

“We’re the only important and major city that doesn’t have one. We don’t have a triumphal arch,” Trump said in the Oval Office in May. “So, it was meant to be built for many years.”

The issue centers on lawmakers’ intent for Memorial Circle, a traffic roundabout tucked inside Washington’s boundaries, located near the entrance to the military cemetery and managed by the National Park Service.

The administration is pursuing a plan to begin construction as soon as November, despite objections from veterans groups, historic preservationists, and others. Opponents say the arch will overshadow the cemetery, alter pedestrians’ views of the Lincoln Memorial and other historic sites, and cause other disruptions.

The Trump administration has acknowledged that the large arch will unavoidably harm local historic sites if built as planned.

The administration contends that it does not need approval for the arch from Congress since lawmakers a century ago authorized the columns. In that case, advocates say, the administration should hew to the original, congressionally authorized plan.

Historic preservationists also note that the 250-foot-tall, roughly 165-foot-wide arch that Trump wants in Memorial Circle is very different from the narrow, 166-foot-tall columns that were initially envisioned to be built about 300 feet apart.

“In terms of size, scale, massing, and design, the proposed arch is not in any way comparable to the unbuilt columns contemplated in the 1924 design proposal,” Judy Chesser and Paul Edmondson, of the Committee of 100 on the Federal City, wrote in their own letter to the Interior Department on Wednesday. The letter was shared with the Post.

Chesser and Edmondson added that the Arlington Memorial Bridge Commission, which was overseeing the original project, dropped plans for the columns in 1931 amid concerns about the planned design and the proximity to a nearby airport, among other factors.

The Interior Department, which oversees the Park Service, did not respond to questions about whether the administration would consider building columns instead of an arch. The department referred to social media posts by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum that referenced the past efforts in Congress to build a monument near Memorial Circle.

Burgum’s posts did not specifically mention columns.

Tammy Stidham, a Park Service senior official helping oversee the arch project, said last week that the administration had not considered building columns instead of an arch.

“Different sizes were considered of the same structure, but not different structures,” Stidham said at a meeting with preservationists and other groups, according to a recording of the meeting posted by the Park Service.

Asked about how the arch envisioned by Trump complied with plans in 1924 to build a structure that would not interfere with the views between the cemetery and the Lincoln Memorial, Stidham said the arch was a “replacement” for the original concept.

“It is not intended to be the same structure,” Stidham said.

One federal commission, which Trump has packed with allies, has already approved the planned arch. A second commission is expected to offer final approval as soon as Nov. 5. The Trump administration has laid out a plan to build the arch within two to three years, which they say would require 20 hours per day of construction.

In his letter to the administration, Lewis said that Trump officials had not heeded or fully acknowledged the widespread objections to the plan.

“Approximately 93% of the roughly 11,000 comments submitted from within the District of Columbia expressed very strong opposition to the proposal,” he wrote.

He also said that the administration’s acknowledgment of harms from building the arch did not go far enough to capture its impact on other historic sites.

“The arch would not merely be ‘prominently visible,’” Lewis wrote. “Instead, it would visually overwhelm the surrounding historic context.”