Iran war casualty count eclipses 600 as Pentagon quietly changes accounting
A door marshaller closes the door as the transfer cases containing the remains of U.S. Army 1st Lt Tyler Feehan and U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Michael Emmanuel Swinton arrive at Dover Air Force Base during a dignified transfer for military casualties of the war with Iran on July 22.
(CNN) — The Pentagon updated its war casualty database Saturday, recording more than 140 additionally wounded and restoring the four soldiers killed due to Iranian strikes last week amid questions about a lack of transparency over the war’s toll.
The Defense Casualty Analysis System, or DCAS, also featured a new tracking category — “Overseas Operations” — for killed and wounded “starting July 7.”
When the new Pentagon data is combined with updated totals for Operation Epic Fury, 18 troops have died and another 624 have been wounded since the US launched its war against Iran on Feb. 28. The number of wounded is a significant increase from the previous peak of 482 observed by CNN last week.
The Pentagon drew scrutiny from media outlets and lawmakers last week when killed and wounded numbers decreased in the DCAS system as Iranian attacks continued. The 12 Democratic lawmakers on the Senate Armed Services Committee sent a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday requesting answers on what was causing the changes.
The Defense Department’s acting press secretary, Joel Valdez, insisted in a Thursday social media post that the decreases were due to “temporary data disruptions on the (DCAS) website.” CNN observed data glitches that led to fluctuating casualty totals when monitoring the DCAS site on a minute-by-minute basis last week.
On Friday, CNN asked the Pentagon for more details about the data interruption, but the department neither acknowledged nor responded to the inquiry as of Sunday afternoon.
Beyond the July 7 starting date, the new “overseas operation” category on the DCAS site does not include any distinguishing details or specify the conflict in which the casualties occur, and the Pentagon did not immediately respond to questions seeking clarification on what the category covers. The category features a by-name list of fallen troops, though, that includes the three Army soldiers killed in Jordan due to an Iranian strike and the soldier killed in northern Iraq last weekend during a controlled detonation of an Iranian drone.
The July 7 date coincides with when President Donald Trump claimed a new conflict with Iran began in a War Powers notification the administration sent to Congress earlier this month. (The War Powers Act of 1973 requires the president to end military operations within 60 days unless authorized by Congress to continue; the Trump administration argued that the April ceasefire with Iran stopped the clock on May 1 for the conflict’s initial period.)
Lawmakers of both parties have argued against the administration’s interpretation of the War Powers clock, though some analysts and officials contend that the act itself represents an unconstitutional limit on presidential war-making authority. Secretary of State Marco Rubio argued the law is “unconstitutional, 100 percent” during a May press briefing at the White House.
Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said to Hegseth during a July 21 hearing that she is “concerned” the administration is circumventing Congress through the ceasefire clock reset.
“The claim essentially allows the president to extinguish the War Powers clock just at the moment that it becomes legally inconvenient … avoiding the congressional authorization that the Constitution requires and the War Powers (Act) intends,” she said.
Davis Winkie’s work at CNN is supported by a partnership between Outrider Foundation and Journalism Funding Partners (JFP). CNN retains full editorial control of the reporting.
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This story has been updated to include additional details.
