U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) accused President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday of failing to protect American service members from an Iranian drone strike in Kuwait and then covering up the military’s inadequate response to the wounded, escalating a monthslong fight between congressional Democrats and the Pentagon over accountability for the deadliest attack on U.S. troops during the war with Iran.
Duckworth, a combat veteran who serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee, posted her statement on X on the afternoon of July 30, 2026, in response to a Washington Post report that Democratic lawmakers were opening a new investigation into the Pentagon’s handling of the March 1 strike on Port Shuaiba, a military post in Kuwait that left six U.S. service members dead. Her full post read:
“The Port Shuaiba attack exposed Trump’s failure to protect and care for troops who are injured.
Trump and Hegseth must stop putting servicemembers in harm’s way, failing them when they’re wounded and then covering it up.
I’m demanding answers.”
The post came hours after the Washington Post reported that Democratic lawmakers had announced a new investigation into reports that the Pentagon responded inadequately to the March 1 Iranian drone strike. In a letter dated Wednesday, July 29, and addressed to Hegseth, a group of nearly a dozen Senate and House Democrats demanded answers to a list of questions about the attack and the military’s response to it.
Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Representative Pat Ryan (D-N.Y.) led the effort, with Duckworth among the lawmakers who signed on. The letter was a follow-up to an earlier inquiry the same group of lawmakers sent in April, and the Democrats noted that the Trump administration has still not provided the results of the Army’s investigation into the strike or answered the questions raised in that initial request.
The lawmakers wrote that developments since their earlier letters have only sharpened their concerns. “Since we sent those letters, at least five more service members have been killed and additional reporting sheds further light on the Trump administration’s ineptitude and lack of preparedness in launching its war against Iran,” they wrote.
The July 29 letter, which cited Washington Post reporting on survivor accounts, pressed the Pentagon specifically on the medical response to the attack. “We request further information on why soldiers injured in the attack appear to have not gotten timely access to medical care and on the Trump administration’s apparent inadequate preparation for attacks against service members in region, including at Port Shuaiba,” the lawmakers wrote.
The letter also raised broader concerns about whether U.S. forces in the region are adequately defended. “We are already seeing the tragic consequences of Iranian strikes evading U.S. defenses and we are concerned by reports that military infrastructure in the region is unable to protect service members from these attacks,” the lawmakers wrote. They requested a written response from the Defense Department by August 12.
The letter closed with a direct appeal to Hegseth over the administration’s continued conduct of the war. “As you and President Trump continue to risk the lives of service members in this reckless war, the American people deserve answers on whether you were adequately prepared to protect service members from Iranian attacks and get them the care they needed, and whether you will be prepared to do so if the war continues and escalates even further,” the letter reads.
Background: The March 1 Strike on Port Shuaiba
The Port Shuaiba attack took place on March 1, 2026, the second day of the U.S.-Israeli military campaign against Iran, when an Iranian one-way attack drone struck a makeshift tactical operations center at the Kuwaiti port. Six U.S. Army Reserve soldiers assigned to the 103rd Sustainment Command, based in Des Moines, Iowa, were killed, and more than 30 other service members were wounded, making it the deadliest single attack on U.S. forces during the conflict.
In the weeks after the strike, Hegseth described the drone as a “squirter” that had slipped past defenses protecting a fortified position, an account survivors have publicly disputed. One injured soldier, speaking to CBS News on condition of anonymity, said the characterization was false and that the unit had little to no drone defense capability in place at the time of the attack.
Those contradictions were aired publicly in April, when Ryan, an Army and Iraq War veteran, questioned Hegseth directly during a House Armed Services Committee hearing about whether Port Shuaiba had been identified in advance as a likely Iranian target. Hegseth largely did not answer the line of questioning, according to reporting on the exchange. Ryan and other House Democrats sent Hegseth a formal letter that same month demanding accountability for the force-protection failures at the base.
Duckworth’s Thursday post is consistent with a pattern of public pressure she has placed on Hegseth over troop safety and Pentagon transparency since the war began. In May, during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Duckworth pressed Hegseth and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan Caine over what she described as a lack of strategy in the war, noting that the conflict had by that point left 14 service members dead and hundreds more wounded.
Duckworth has also called for scrutiny of Hegseth on separate national security matters during his tenure, including publicly backing an investigation by the Department of Defense’s acting inspector general into Hegseth’s use of the unclassified messaging app Signal to discuss details of a U.S. military strike, an episode that became widely known as “SignalGate.”
As of Thursday, the Pentagon had not publicly released the Army’s completed investigation into the Port Shuaiba attack, and the department has not issued a public response to the Democrats’ latest letter. Under the timeline set by Warren, Ryan, Duckworth and their colleagues, Hegseth’s office has until August 12 to respond in writing.