Article By Rob Quinn
The Pentagon isn’t talking much about parts of the Iran war—and that includes American casualties, according to the New York Times. In the week before Friday’s strike in Jordan that killed two US soldiers and left one missing, Iran launched three other attacks on US forces there, injuring dozens and damaging helicopters, the Times reports, citing “several US officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters.”
Those incidents, and the resulting injuries, were not publicly disclosed. Instead, US Central Command said recent retaliatory strikes were a response to Iranian moves against commercial shipping, with no mention of the Jordan attacks.
Military officials argue they’re trying not to hand Iran tactical clues, including how effective its missiles and drones have been against US bases across the region, and have also stopped detailing how many Iranian sites are hit daily.
- Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell rejected accusations of a cover-up, pointing to the Defense Casualty Analysis System, which publishes aggregate figures but not details of specific attacks. That database currently lists 427 US service members wounded and 14 killed in the Iran conflict—numbers that don’t yet reflect the latest deaths in Jordan and Iraq. “Claims of concealment are fabrications meant to further distress the American people in the wake of three service members killed in action,” Parnell said in a statement.
- Jordan, along with Israel, is believed to be the host of many of the air assets the US has recently sent to the Middle East, the Wall Street Journal reports. It emerged as a hub for the US military partly due to geography, and also because of its “willingness to fully align itself with the US strategic and regional goals due to its economic dependence on Washington,” says Alan Eyre at the Middle East Institute, who served as a senior US diplomat in Jordan. “It was a good low-risk strategy until Iran decided to retaliate against the US regional bases,” he says.
- In a Truth Social post Monday, President Trump vowed to step up retaliation against Iran. “Every time Iran kills an American Soldier they will pay for that killing many times over!” he wrote. “This directive has been passed on to Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Daniel Caine, and every Leader in the Military.”
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