Facing criticism that it had minimized the number of U.S. soldiers killed and wounded in the war with Iran, the Pentagon on Sunday changed the way it reports casualties as it announced a higher number of wounded service members this month.
In an unusual new accounting method, casualties since July 7, when the cease-fire began unraveling and fighting escalated, are not listed on a Pentagon website with others since the war began, but rather on a new webpage labeled generically as “overseas operations casualties.” This means that a full accounting of the overall casualties requires adding numbers from separate web pages.
Under the new system, the Defense Casualty Analysis System restored the deaths of four soldiers killed last weekend in the war that had been removed from the website — but in a separate, unexplained category. The change also raised the number of those wounded to 142 more than were previously reported by the Pentagon since July 7.
The official number of soldiers wounded since that date is now listed as 207, for a total of 624 since the war began on Feb. 28. The total number listed as killed is 18.
Last week, Sean Parnell, the chief Pentagon spokesman, insisted that the number of U.S. troops injured since July 7 was fewer than 100. The Pentagon had not previously disclosed a number of several Iranian strikes on bases in the region that housed U.S. troops.
“Claims of concealment are fabrications meant to further distress the American people in the wake of three service members killed in action,” Mr. Parnell said in a statement at the time.
A Pentagon spokesman on Sunday referred questions about the new numbers and system for reporting to the White House, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Last week, The New York Times reported that the Pentagon had lowered the number of service members killed in the Iran war to 14 from 18, a move that prompted outrage among many veterans, military families and lawmakers.
The change was made because the four service members killed recently in Jordan and Iraq had died after a cease-fire had been reached between Iran and the United States in April, military officials told The Times on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive internal discussions.
The acting press secretary for the Pentagon, Joel Valdez, on Thursday attributed the change to “temporary data disruptions” on the website that he suggested would be fixed quickly.
As of Saturday morning, the Pentagon’s website still listed 14 service members killed as part of Operation Epic Fury, the name the Defense Department has given to the war in Iran.
On Sunday, the additional category, “overseas operations,” was added. It listed the four additional deaths with a note: “Overseas operations casualties starting July 7, 2026.”
As criticism over the administration’s reporting of casualties rose, a group of Democratic senators sent a letter on Thursday to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth requesting a “comprehensive accounting” of the number of service members killed or wounded.
In the week before the recent attacks that killed three soldiers in Jordan, three other strikes by Iran left dozens injured. These casualties were not immediately disclosed by the Pentagon, raising questions about whether the government was meeting its obligation to inform the country about the number of service members who had been either wounded or killed.
The senators wrote: “The American people, Congress, service members and their families are entitled to a full and accurate accounting of the human costs of war. The information currently available to the public suggests that the Department has not consistently provided timely and comprehensive public casualty reporting throughout the conflict.”
President Trump has asserted to lawmakers that the latest escalation in the war is part of a new conflict with Iran and not just the continuation of the one he started with Israel in February. That conflict, he maintained, ended in April when the cease-fire took effect. On July 10, he formally notified Congress that hostilities with Iran had resumed, a position that administration officials contend allows them to start the clock again on the war and, presumably, on how they classify the war dead and injured.
The War Powers act of 1973 requires the president to end military operations within 60 days unless authorized by Congress to continue. On Thursday, the House voted a second time to direct Mr. Trump to end the war in Iran or seek explicit authorization to continue it, a sign of the growing and bipartisan discontent with the war.
