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WASHINGTON — The four American troops killed during renewed fighting between the U.S. and Iran in recent weeks are no longer listed as part of the Iran war death toll in the Pentagon’s official casualty count but have been placed in a new, separate category.

It is raising questions about properly counting the impact to U.S. service members as the Trump administration escalated strikes on Iran in a bid to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, while providing little indication of how it intends to wind down a conflict that is unpopular with many Americans.

The Defense Casualty Analysis System, which Pentagon officials have repeatedly pointed to as the definitive source on the numbers of dead and wounded from the conflict, removed the four fallen soldiers as well as dozens of wounded troops from its Iran war tally last week.

On Sunday, a new category called “Overseas Operations” emerged on the system’s website, listing the four Army deaths by name as well as 207 wounded. It was unclear if all of the wounded were injured in the Iran conflict.

U.S. Central Command, which oversees operations in the Middle East, referred questions to the Pentagon, which did not immediately respond.

Pentagon described earlier changes to the system as ‘data disruptions’

Pentagon press secretary Joel Valdez argued Thursday that the drop in casualty figures in the online system was not an effort to hide the growing human toll of the war but rather the result of “anomalies” and “temporary data disruptions” that were being resolved “imminently.”

As late as Tuesday, the website was reporting the war’s official toll as 18 killed and 482 wounded.

It appeared to reflect that four soldiers had been killed since fighting resumed despite the signing of an interim ceasefire deal last month — three on a base in Jordan that was struck July 17 by Iranian ballistic missiles and drones, and one in Iraq a day later during a controlled detonation of an Iranian drone.

Adding further confusion, when the Pentagon announced two of the deaths in Jordan, it said the troops were supporting the U.S. mission to counter the Islamic State group. The other two were announced in press releases simply as supporting overseas operations.

President Donald Trump has confirmed the total, writing in a Truth Social post on Tuesday that the “Iran Military Conflict” had claimed 18 lives.

By Wednesday, the Iran war figures in the Pentagon’s system fell back to 14 dead and 420 wounded. However, a U.S. official told the Associated Press at the time that the actual number of wounded personnel in the war had grown to well over 500 troops.

The Pentagon’s top spokesperson, Sean Parnell, took to social media that day to assert that the reported drop was a “temporary data disruption.”

New category lists casualties following date of renewed fighting

The U.S. and Israel launched the war in Iran on Feb. 28, and 14 troops were killed in the initial waves of fighting. Washington and Tehran agreed to a ceasefire in April and then signed an interim deal to end the war in mid-June.

It was short-lived. Iran struck three merchant vessels in the Strait of Hormuz on July 7 that were transiting along a route near the coast of Oman overseen by the U.S. military. American forces launched strikes in response to the attacks on vessels in the key energy shipping corridor. Trump soon declared that the ceasefire was over.

The Pentagon system’s new “Overseas Operations” category says it tallies casualties starting July 7.

Since then, the U.S. and Iran have exchanged regular fire in a bid to control the crucial waterway, with the U.S. hitting Iranian targets nightly for nearly two weeks and Tehran responding with attacks on neighboring countries hosting American forces. There have been no strikes for two nights as mediators push for diplomacy.

Since the renewed hostilities began, the Pentagon has provided even less information about military strategy and casualties than it did during the first phase of the conflict. The Pentagon has not held a press briefing about the war since early May, and officials at U.S. Central Command have stopped providing casualty updates to reporters.

Pentagon officials such as Valdez and Parnell have insisted that the DCAS website is proof of the commitment to transparency about the number of dead and injured in the war.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is proposing to eliminate a foundational safety principle that has for 50 years minimized the radiation people in the United States are exposed to and that has been adopted around the world.

Currently, facilities such as nuclear plants, hospitals, or academic institutions that use radioactive materials must ensure radiation exposures are kept “as low as reasonably achievable” — the ALARA principle. The NRC proposal would abandon that philosophy while keeping a separate standard on maximum radiation exposure.

The two standards have worked together in radiation safety. Dose limits set the maximum amount of radiation the public and radiation workers can be exposed to, while ALARA kept radiation exposure as low as practical under those limits. Research shows radiation exposure increases a person’s chance of getting cancer, a risk that increases as the dose increases.

The dose limits are not changing. But the NRC, which regulates civilian nuclear energy technologies and radioactive materials, now wants to replace ALARA with a “graded approach” that includes several actions facilities must take depending on the potential dose of radiation to workers. More rigorous radiation protection measures would be required when approaching dose limits to ensure they aren’t exceeded.

This comes as President Donald Trump attempts to quadruple domestic nuclear energy production because of surging electricity demand amid a data center and artificial intelligence boom. Reforming the NRC is one way Trump is trying to speed up nuclear reactor development. He instructed the federal agency in an executive order last year to “adopt science-based radiation limits.”

The Energy Department, which oversees national energy policies, has already stopped using ALARA. The NRC expects to finalize its radiation protection regulations in the coming months.

NRC Chairperson Ho Nieh said the commission is not lowering the bar on safety.

“We’re just removing the ambiguity,” he said in a call with reporters. “But the standard for exposure to workers and the public, those are not changing. We’re just putting in place greater clarification.”

Nieh doesn’t expect major changes within the nation’s existing fleet of large, traditional reactors. But companies designing and building new, smaller reactors could move faster with a clearer picture of the radiation protection requirements, he said.

Without ALARA, could radiation doses creep closer to the limits?

The NRC said radiation exposure limits are set well below levels associated with health effects, and it expects remaining standards and industry practices to keep radiation doses far below the limits. There’s incentive to do so — it’s more expensive and time-consuming to work in areas with higher radiation because access must be restricted and more surveys are required.

The nuclear industry’s trade association agrees with the NRC.

“We will always continue to look at what can we do to reduce the dose to workers, and maintain our doses to the off-site public as low as possible,” said Doug True, chief nuclear officer at the Nuclear Energy Institute. “It’s not like we’re just going to throw open the doors and let everything run up to the limits.”

ALARA created a “moving target” for regulation, said Justin Friedman, a nuclear energy consultant who previously spent three decades at the U.S. Department of State. Getting rid of the rule would allow NRC scientists to make more rational decisions about appropriate levels of manageable risk, he added.

Some experts question the wisdom of eliminating ALARA

Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists, cautions that some parts of the NRC proposal could raise permissible radiation doses in certain cases, while still staying below the cap. Lyman highlighted a proposed revision to radionuclide emissions standards, in particular.

Radiation exposure to the general public is limited to 100 millirem per year. A typical dose of radiation from a chest X-ray is 10 millirem.

The NRC wants to increase its radionuclide emissions standards from a conservative 10 millirem per year dose to 25 millirem per year, based on a hypothetical person living in a house at the property line for a nuclear plant.

The NRC says actual doses to the public would remain far lower because, in reality, people live farther from nuclear sites and benefit from dispersion in air and water.

The NRC should improve, rather than eliminate, ALARA, Lyman said, to protect the public and workers. ALARA has become a political target because some people mistakenly believe radiation exposures have to be as low as possible no matter the cost, Lyman said. In reality, it allows tradeoffs.

Katy Huff, a former U.S. assistant secretary for nuclear energy, said in some cases, the requirement may be challenging to regulate. Additional clarity would improve the regulatory environment without harming the public, added Huff, a professor and department chair at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

However, Huff said, she thought the NRC was going to clarify what reasonable means in ALARA without scrapping it. She said she’s open to being convinced the graded approach will be just as effective.

Radiation protection expert says proposal is a mixed bag

The National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements, chartered by Congress to provide independent scientific guidance, has not formally weighed in yet. Council president Kathryn Higley said she personally likes some things in the 180-page document and thinks others are problematic.

The NRC should look at the whole picture for managing risk, she said. For instance, if a worker at a nuclear power plant were to enter an area where airborne radioactive materials are present, in keeping with ALARA, they might wear full personal protective equipment with respirators, said Higley, professor emeritus at Oregon State University. That makes them move more slowly, potentially subjecting them to heat stress that could hurt them more than a low dose of radioactivity, she said.

A concern with the proposal, Higley said, is that it maintains the current occupational dose limit for adult radiation workers at 5 rem, or 5,000 millirem, per year. With ALARA in place, the average dose to workers has been well below that cap.

The International Commission on Radiological Protection recommends an occupational dose of 2 rem per year on average. The NRC previously found it wasn’t justified to match that, because workers were exposed to less than that and changing regulations is costly.

Higley said the U.S. may need to align with the international community if ALARA is going away.

TEL AVIV, Israel — Two mosques in the Israeli-occupied West Bank were set on fire overnight in an apparent Israeli settler attack, officials said Sunday, after a spate of deadly violence that killed four Palestinians and two Israeli soldiers.

Palestinians and the Israeli opposition accuse Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-line government of turning a blind eye to attacks by settlers against Palestinians, which threaten to ignite widespread violence across the territory.

Israeli soldiers and police fanned out across the West Bank after the attack, closing off major roads and blocking access to a hospital where it said two militants were hiding. Israel also arrested more than 70 Palestinians over the weekend as they attempted to contain the escalating violence.

Israel’s military says it condemns such incidents

The mosques, in the villages of Qusra and Kour in the northern West Bank, suffered extensive damage in the fires.

In Qusra, the attackers spray-painted “revenge Benayahu,” referring to one of the Israeli soldiers killed on Friday, and “the land of Israel is redeemed with blood.” The soldier lived in a nearby settlement.

Ahmed Abu Mahmoud, 64, who lives next to the Qusra mosque, said he heard noises at 3 a.m. and discovered the mosque had been set on fire. The fire was too large for him to fight on his own, so he called for help.

“The military arrived here, saw with their own eyes, and then left,” Mahmoud said.

Security footage in Kour obtained by the Associated Press showed three people dressed in civilian clothes setting off a large explosion in the entrance of the mosque in the middle of the night.

On Sunday, residents held prayers despite damage to the entrance.

Israel’s military said it was working with police to investigate the mosque attack.

“The security forces strongly condemn incidents of this kind, including harm to religious sites, and will continue to act decisively to maintain security and public order in the area,” it said.

The Israeli army often announces investigations into violence against Palestinians but rarely makes arrests or prosecutes settlers involved in violence.

The military also reported it had sealed the homes of two Palestinian militants suspected of killing the soldiers in preparation for their demolition. Israel often demolishes the homes of attackers, claiming it deters future attacks.

On Sunday, Netanyahu said troops entered villages across the West Bank to seize weapons and make arrests. “We are also prepared to operate on a broader scale against the terrorist nests,” he said.

The exact circumstances of Friday’s deadly incidents remained unclear, but Israeli media reports and interviews with local Palestinian officials said they were sparked after a group of settlers entered the village of Tell and were confronted by residents who were fearful of an attack.

According to the Israeli military, one of the Palestinians took one of the settlers’ weapons and fired on the group, killing Benayahu Mellet, 32, a security guard from a nearby settlement.

Palestinians and human rights groups have increasingly documented armed Israeli settlers entering villages in the area. Livestock theft, arson, and the defacement of mosques are routinely reported.

Leaders appeal for peace and pressure on Israel

Arab League Secretary-General Nabil Fahmy urged U.S. President Donald Trump to restrain “the Israeli government’s extremist ambitions,” including its implementation of a “de facto annexation in the West Bank.”

He called on Trump to confront Netanyahu ahead of their meeting in the United States this week.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas sent letters to Arab and other allies, including the European Union, urging them to pressure Israel to stop settler violence in the West Bank, which he described as a systemic Israeli policy and a dangerous escalation, the Palestinian news agency WAFA reported. The Palestinian Authority is the internationally recognized representative of the Palestinian people.

Pope Leo XIV appealed for peace in the Middle East at the end of his weekly Sunday prayer, saying, “I am following with apprehension the persistence and escalation of violence in the Holy Land, of which recently many civilians in the West Bank and Gaza have also been victims.”

He appealed for a “return to negotiating a just political solution.”

According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, 87 Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank this year, including 21 by Israeli settlers. Three Israelis have been killed in attacks by Palestinian militants in 2026, including the two soldiers on Friday.

More than 700,000 Israeli settlers live in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem, territories captured by Israel in 1967 and sought by the Palestinians for a future independent state. The international community overwhelmingly considers Israeli settlements be illegal and obstacles to peace.

Israel approves immunity for an international force in Gaza

Israel’s security cabinet on Sunday took a step toward the deployment of an international stabilization force in Gaza, approving granting it immunity under Israeli law, a political source told the AP.

Israel will also decide which countries will send forces and that the prime minister, defense minister, and foreign minister will approve them.

So far, the international force is expected to have 200 members from different countries, including Uganda and Morocco, said the source, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss a decision made in a closed-door meeting.

Israeli forces control well over half of Gaza’s territory, which was largely destroyed in two years of war that followed the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. A fragile ceasefire began in October, but next steps in its implementation — including reconstruction — have been largely stalled over the issue of Hamas’ disarmament. Israel maintains its forces won’t withdraw until Hamas is disarmed.

Last week, the U.S.-created Board of Peace meant to oversee Gaza’s reconstruction said it was working on a pilot governance and humanitarian zone in southern Gaza that would be secured by the international force.