In the last two days, the Pentagon reportedly reduced the announced U.S. service member death toll in the Iran war from 18 to 14.
Three military officials told The New York Times that the revision was in part because the most recent four deaths — three in Jordan and one in Iraq — came after President Trump declared an initial ceasefire in April.
“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,” retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, who served in the first Trump administration, told the paper.
In a post Thursday on X, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell called suggestions of an intentional reduction “one of the worst instances of the Fake News media manufacturing lies out of thin air for absolutely no reason at all but to cause distress among the American people.”
“The site errors on the Defense Casualty Analysis System (DCAS) were due to a temporary data disruption,” he added.
A review of the Pentagon’s Defense Casualty Analysis System still showed 14 deaths as of Thursday at 6 p.m. Pacific time.
President Trump, meanwhile, has repeatedly referred to 18 deaths from the war in remarks throughout this week while defending the conflict’s casualty count.
“One is too many, but it’s 18,” he said on Thursday.
The Republican has claimed the fallen troops supported his campaign in Iran because they wanted to stop the country from possessing a nuclear weapon.
“They said, and all of them said very strongly, ‘We can’t let, we cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. They won’t have a nuclear weapon,’” the president said on Wednesday ahead of a dignified transfer ceremony. “So, we’re going to honor them, and one of the hardest things to do — for me, it’s one of the hardest things to do as a president — but has to be done.”
It’s not the first time the Trump administration has been accused of downplaying the impact of the conflict.
The military allegedly did not disclose three strikes in Jordan last week that injured dozens of U.S. service members and damaged multiple helicopters, various outlets reported.
On Monday, Parnell said in a statement that there have been nearly 100 injuries as a result of the war. He added that “claims of concealment are fabrications meant to further distress the American people.”
An estimated 50,000 U.S. troops are stationed throughout the Middle East as the conflict continues.
Attacks against Iran, which have included a strike on a girls’ school, have killed at least 1,700 Iranian civilians, according to human rights activists.
President Trump has vowed to bomb a bridge or power plant every time Iran fires on a ship in the Strait of Hormuz.
Intentionally targeting civilian infrastructure could be considered a war crime, according to experts.
