The Pentagon Found a New Way to Undercount U.S. Casualties in Iran

The Pentagon is using a new method of tallying the number of U.S. soldiers killed and wounded in the Iran war that a U.S. government official said was designed to obscure the count."

Since the start of the conflict, the Department of War has posted the official count of casualties on the website of the Defense Casualty Analysis System, or DCAS, which tracks deceased, wounded, ill or injured" service members forCongress and the president. This official total of dead and wounded personnel, as documented over months of reporting by The Intercept,has been agrossundercount, stemming from what that same official previously called a casualty cover-up."

But after a series of Iranian strikes on U.S. facilities in the Middle East in July, the Pentagon last week rolled out a new approach. Casualties since July 7 are now counted separately on a new webpage with a generic designation: Overseas Operations."

Two hundred and seventy-three U.S. troops were killed or wounded since July 7, according to the Monday total on the new Overseas Operations page.

When combined with the existing DCAS page for the Iran war, the official count stands at 704, an 83 percent increase in casualties since April 8, the day the first ceasefire deal was struck between the Trump administration and Iran. When counting known casualties overlooked by the DCAS page, the total exceeds 900 personnel.

For months, the Pentagon has failed to comment on DCAS anomalies reported by The Intercept nor the reason for the change in the way it now counts casualties, which was first reported by the New York Times. Last week, the Pentagon told the newspaper that since Operation Epic Fury has concluded, the department classifies casualties as overseas operations in the CENTCOM area of responsibility." Central Command oversees U.S. military operations in the Middle East.

This is certainly designed to conceal the count of the wounded," the official said, while noting that incompetence" has also caused confusion in the casualty count.

The change comes after a July 20 rant by Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell who claimed reports of a Pentagon effort to withhold news of dozens of U.S. casualties were baseless and malicious" and a U.S. official's disclosure toThe Intercept that same day that recent attacks on U.S. bases by Iran had wounded far more" personnel than the Pentagon had acknowledged.

The casualty spike resulted from Iranian attacks on at least nine U.S. outposts across the Middle East since July 9, according to a second U.S. official who spoke to The Intercept on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak with the press.

Iran's military managed to overwhelm U.S. air defense systems using a mix of attack drones and advanced ballistic missiles, despitemonths of claimsby President Donald Trump and self-styled War Secretary Pete Hegseth that Iran's militarywas annihilated.

Last month, the tally of wounded personnel fluctuated by the day in the wake of increased Iranian attacks. On July 21, the casualty count on DCAS for Operation Epic Fury, the military's official designation for the Iran war, stood at 500. Now, it has shrunk to 431.

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For months, The Intercept found anomalies with the counts offered on the DCAS website. On April 21, for example, the number ofwounded-in-action troops declined by 15without public acknowledgment by the War Department. Despite repeated questions for months, the Pentagon has not commented on the disparities in its casualty count.

Prior reportingbyThe Intercept also found DCAS ismissinghundreds of dead and wounded personnel from Epic Fury. The Pentagon list of the names of the dead is still missing Maj. Sorffly Davius, a signals and communication officer with the New York Army National Guard who was assigned to the headquarters of the 42nd Infantry Division and reportedly died of sudden illness while on duty in Camp Buehring, Kuwait, on March 6. Davius's death was widely acknowledged even as it was excluded from the the official count: Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., spoke about him during amemorial servicethat month, and Gen. Dan Caine, the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,recognized Daviuswhile honoring our fallen."

While DCAS provides a running tally of non-hostile" deaths - meaning those who died from accidents or by illness - it doesn't include non-hostile" injuries. The DCAS figures for Epic Fury show that 65 Navy personnel were wounded in action. Missing, however, are the more than200 sailorstreated for smoke inhalation or lacerations due to a March 12 fire that raged aboard theUSSGerald R. Ford.The aircraft carrier had been conducting round-the-clock flight operations to, Caine said, project combat power" in the Middle East.

Recent reporting by the War Horse, using Pentagon records obtained via the Freedom of Information Act, found more than 400 casualties were recorded between February 28 and April 8. Seventy occurred on March 18 alone, but this huge single-day toll was never reported by the Pentagon.

The records provide more granular detail than DCAS, revealing that at least 17 troops sustained life-threatening injuries. They show that U.S. troops suffered shrapnel wounds, broken bones, smoke inhalation, and other injuries. The most common injury recorded, however, was head trauma - which affected at least 170 troops, according to the data.

President Donald Trump haslongdismissedbrain injuries asheadaches" and not serious."

The post The Pentagon Found a New Way to Undercount U.S. Casualties in Iran appeared first on The Intercept.