Category: Wires

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.”

An airstrike on a train line that endangered the lives of former European leaders and CIA officers.

Armed drones in Moldova suspected of stalking the plane of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

A clandestine effort to assemble an international network of assassins, including plans to “eliminate” a Kremlin critic in Washington.

In a matter of weeks, Russia has been linked to a stunning series of attacks and plots that — had any one of them turned deadly — carried the potential to trigger a dangerous escalation in the war in Ukraine and the West’s broader conflict with Moscow, according to security officials and experts.

The spate of attacks — at a moment when the Trump administration is pushing to revive peace negotiations — has put security agencies on edge, officials said, threatened travel routes that are critical to Ukraine’s ability to maintain ties with its supporters, and raised concerns that Russia once again is probing how far it can go in widening the war as it seeks to break the will of Kyiv’s backers.

Russia’s drone strike on a train near the Ukraine-Poland border early Sunday seemed to mark a worrisome new development in Moscow’s calculations, officials said.

The attack destroyed a locomotive on a section of track where a delegation of diplomats and former top European officials — including former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson — had passed a short while earlier after attending an annual Yalta European Strategy conference in Kyiv.

Former CIA director David Petraeus and two other former agency officials were on a separate train that was evacuated minutes before the explosion, officials said.

Former officials and experts said Moscow probably intended to send a signal of intimidation but that a minor mistake in timing or coordinates could have left dozens dead and put pressure on the United States and its allies to retaliate.

“My assessment was that it wasn’t intended to kill Boris Johnson or David Petraeus,” said Glenn Corn, a former senior CIA official with responsibilities for operations in Russia and Eurasia who was also aboard the evacuated train. “But it was definitely premeditated and intended to send a strong message: We don’t want you coming to Ukraine. This is our sphere of influence. This is a warning.”

An errant strike on trains carrying Johnson or Petraeus risked unleashing a “snowball effect,” Corn said, an “escalatory chain” that could test the restraint of Moscow and Washington.

French President Emmanuel Macron warned Friday that “the Russian hybrid threat has been intensifying” in recent weeks.

“The nature of Russian aggression, and its threats in Europe, are changing,” he told reporters after a meeting with leaders of France’s political parties, along with military and security chiefs. He cited the train strike and repeated drone incursions into European airspace, among other incidents. He said he has instructed French authorities to increase vigilance.

The strike came just days after Zelensky said his government plane was targeted by Russian drones at an airstrip in Moldova as he was traveling to the Sept. 9 funeral of the king of Norway, a country that has been a staunch supporter of Ukraine since Russia’s 2022 invasion.

“In Moldova, my presidential jet was there, and that’s why they attacked Moldova,” Zelensky said in an interview with CBS. “When we went back home, again through Chisinau, they did the same.”

Ukrainian and Moldovan officials confirmed that Russian drones had crossed into Moldovan airspace while Zelensky’s jet prepared to depart Chisinau International Airport, though officials said that one of the drones was destroyed near the border about 100 miles from the airport and that Zelensky’s plane was never in danger.

On Tuesday, the U.S. government exposed another alleged front in Russia’s campaign against perceived external adversaries. A criminal indictment unsealed by the Justice Department accused operatives in Russian intelligence services of using encrypted communications apps to recruit assassins to kill dissidents or critics of Moscow.

The indictment, filed in the Southern District of New York, describes communications in late August between alleged agents in Russia and an unidentified U.S. resident as part of a plot to “eliminate” or “disappear” a Russian dissident in Washington.

The network also sought an assassin to kill a Russian dissident in Lithuania, according to the indictment, as well as other recruits to carry out terrorism attacks in the Czech Republic. At one point, according to the indictment, a Russian intelligence officer identified as Yuri Khrameev suggested killing an alleged Kremlin critic by “throwing a bottle of gasoline” or “sticking a knife” in him.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov dismissed the allegations this week, saying Russia had not seen “any coherent evidence or arguments based on anything tangible.”

Officials emphasized that Russia has been linked to assassinations, and to plots targeting alleged dissidents, in Europe for decades, and that in recent years Moscow has pursued other plots that similarly alarmed security services.

In 2024, Russia’s GRU spy agency used operatives recruited online in a plot to place incendiary devices aboard cargo aircraft, causing parcels to catch fire in Britain, Poland, and Germany.

The Biden administration was so alarmed by the prospect of explosions on trans-Atlantic cargo planes that CIA Director William J. Burns and national security adviser Jake Sullivan were enlisted to issue warnings to their counterparts in the Kremlin.

It is not clear if President Donald Trump, who recently scolded Ukraine for carrying out attacks on energy targets in Russia, has taken similar steps to caution Moscow about the train strike or the potential targeting of Zelensky’s aircraft.

European officials have repeatedly denounced Russia in recent months for drone incursions, arson attacks, and other plots attributed to Kremlin security services. German authorities last month found a drone carrying explosives near a Ukrainian cargo plane at an airport in Leipzig.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk warned on Thursday that Russia could launch “hybrid drone and missile strikes” against NATO countries while depicting them as accidental.

“Don’t underestimate it,” Macron said of the Leipzig incident, in remarks to the press Friday. He added, “The consequences would have been tragic. … What happened in Leipzig could happen in any European city.”

Russia’s ability to strike trains near the Polish border or violate Moldova’s airspace has been driven by new military capabilities, including the development of powerful jet-powered drones whose speed and high-altitude trajectories overwhelm Ukraine’s air defenses and have altered the war’s dynamic, according to officials and experts.

Russia rarely succeeded in striking moving targets including trains early in its invasion because of the technical limitations of its air force and the inexperience of its targeters, experts said. Advanced drones, combined with experience, have reduced these shortcomings. As a result, a war in which the front lines have been effectively frozen is now characterized by penetrating strikes by both sides meant to disrupt and exhaust the enemy.

Ukraine has “been doing well at the front and it’s their best year since 2023 in terms of combat performance,” said Michael Kofman, a military analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. But now “it is the rear, the infrastructure in cities, that looks increasingly precarious heading into winter.”

With Ukraine running extremely low on interceptors and other air defenses, Russia has been bombing civilian targets including shopping centers and distribution warehouses used for food and medicine, leading to some shortages. In a diplomatic gesture, Putin agreed to halt attacks on Kyiv for 72 hours while U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner made their first visit to Kyiv since Trump’s return to the presidency.

Ukraine’s airspace has been closed since the start of the invasion, so visiting dignitaries almost universally arrive by railroad.

The number of attacks on trains, however, has “grown exponentially” over the past year as part of a Russian drone campaign aimed at crippling Ukraine’s economy and infrastructure, Ukrainian Railways boss Oleksandr Pertsovsky said this week. He said about 40 trains were hit in August alone, among 400 targeted since the invasion’s outset.

In an interview, Petraeus, who was a four-star U.S. Army general before becoming CIA director under President Barack Obama, said that his recent train trip to and from Kyiv was the 11th he has made since the invasion of February 2022. Petraeus, who attended the YES conference, said he had never before been forced to evacuate a train on the overnight journey, but that his train was evacuated three times this week because of the drone threat.

Asked whether he believed that Russia intended to kill him or other dignitaries who had attended the conference, Petraeus said, “I think that would have been unwise.”

Doing so would be likely to bolster Western resolve in its support for Ukraine, a response that “would undermine what it is [that Russia] is trying to achieve, and they would recognize that.”