US lowers Iran war deaths from 18 to 14 after Pentagon changes how it reports casualties

The US Pentagon has revised the casualty figures for Operation Epic Fury, bringing down the number of troops listed as killed from 18 to 14 and removing dozens of wounded service members from the tally after it abruptly updated its public casualty database last week.

In its Defense Casualty Analysis System (DCAS), the Defense Department appears to be tracking casualties under a new category labeled "Overseas Operations" rather than "Operation Epic Fury," the previously used name for the military campaign in Iran, effectively resetting its accounting of the war's dead and wounded, ABC News reported Monday.

Pentagon lowers Iran war casualties, fatalities: What we know

While the public casualty database has previously posted shifting casualty figures since the war began in February, the discrepancies peaked on 23 July, when the reported death toll fell to 14, removing the four US service members killed in Jordan and Iraq recently.

Additionally, the number of wounded troops also dropped from 482 on 22 July to 420 on 23 July. The revised figures appear to be in contrast with the Pentagon's own statement released last week, in which spokesperson Sean Parnell noted that roughly 100 additional troops had been wounded since 7 July, when the two sides resumed hostilities.

The changes are reflected in the Defense Casualty Analysis System (DCAS), which is the Pentagon's primary public database for tracking the country's military casualties. DCAS is maintained using data submitted by the military services and serves as the federal government's official public record of war casualties.

However, it remains unclear how the Defense Department and its officials are defining "overseas operations" and whether it is exclusively counting casualties and fatalities from the Iran war.

The department's decision to separate individual phases of the war from the broader campaign is unprecedented and could make it harder to determine the total number of US military casualties, the report added. Further, the new Overseas Operations category also includes 207 troops wounded since 7 July, marking at least 624 members as injured since the US and Israel launched the war.

The revised accounting may be tied to US President Donald Trump's administration's view that Operation Epic Fury ended in May, with the renewed fighting resetting the 60-day limit for military action without congressional approval.

Lawmakers slam Trump admin over reduced casualties count

The database, which continues to undercount the conflict's casualties, with Defense Department officials attributing the discrepancies to a technical issue, has received massive backlash, further raising questions about the department's underlying system for tracking casualties.

The revised casualty reporting has drawn criticism from lawmakers, who argue that the administration is making the Iran war's casualty figures less transparent while attempting to bypass the 60-day limit on military action without congressional approval by treating the conflict as a new operation.

Last week, Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee asked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to clarify the Pentagon's casualty reporting and called for a "full and accurate accounting" of all service members killed or wounded since the start of the Iran war.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said she was "outraged" to see that the name of Sgt. Angel Rampersad, one of the four soldiers who was recently killed in the war and a New York native, was removed from the database. Hochul said, "The Trump administration does not get to revise the human cost of this war because it has become politically inconvenient," and added, "Sgt. Rampersad gave her life in service to this country. Changing a website does not rewrite the truth of her sacrifice."

House adopts Iran war powers resolution

The controversy has also spilled over to Congress. In a rare rebuke of Trump, the House of Representatives last week adopted an Iran war powers resolution, with several Republicans, including Thomas Massie, Warren Davidson, Brian Fitzpatrick, and Tom Barrett, extending their support.

In a statement last week, Massie said, "Let me explain this absurd ruse: The Pentagon is pretending there have been two Iran wars separated by a brief cease-fire," and added that Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense, was breaking the law and "must be held accountable" for waging war without Capitol Hill's approval.

The revised count came after Trump last week downplayed the human cost of the Iran conflict. In a social media post, he compared the US fatalities in Iran with those in Afghanistan, Iraq, Korea, and Vietnam, wars that spanned years and claimed thousands of US lives.