Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said Friday that U.S. service members who survived an Iranian drone strike in Kuwait have come forward claiming the Trump administration ignored their requests for advanced medical aid and failed to protect them from the attack, as she and Rep. Pat Ryan (D-N.Y.) lead a new congressional investigation into whether Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth left wounded troops behind.
Warren posted the statement to X at 11:15 a.m. on July 31, 2026, in direct response to Washington Post reporting on the newly opened probe. The full post reads:
“Service members that survived an Iranian attack claim the Trump admin IGNORED their asks for advanced medical aid and failed to protect them from strikes. Our troops deserve better. @RepPatRyanNY and I led Democrats in opening an investigation into whether Pete Hegseth left them behind.”
The post amplified a Wednesday letter to Hegseth in which Warren, Ryan and 11 other members of Congress demanded answers about the Pentagon’s handling of the March 1 drone strike on a U.S. military post at Port Shuaiba, Kuwait, which killed six American service members and injured more than 30 others. The Washington Post reported that Democratic lawmakers were “opening an investigation into the Iranian drone strike that killed six U.S. service members in Kuwait earlier this year, citing doubts over the objectivity of the military’s internal review of the attack.”
The Port Shuaiba strike occurred on the second day of President Trump’s war with Iran, part of what the Pentagon has designated Operation Epic Fury, and remains the deadliest single attack on U.S. forces since the conflict began. In the strike’s immediate aftermath, Hegseth told reporters that defenses had been in place but that a single drone — which he described as “a squirter” — had slipped through, while Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell called the command post a “secure facility” that was “fortified with 6-foot walls.”
That account has since been disputed by the troops who were there. In an April letter to Hegseth, Ryan and 12 fellow House Democratic veterans wrote that Hegseth had “misled the public about the circumstances of the attack and failed to take accountability for the deaths of these brave men and women,” and said injured troops on base had called his characterization of the strike “falsehoods.” The lawmakers wrote that the fatalities were “in fact the result of a failure to provide sufficient overhead protection against known and predictable one-way attack drone threats.”
Soldiers have also alleged the Army ignored requests for additional medical resources before the attack. Maj. Stephen Ramsbottom told CBS News in May that he had expected a convoy of aid to help pull survivors from the rubble after the strike, only to find that none arrived. A soldier separately filed a complaint with the Defense Department’s Inspector General stating that safety conditions at Port Shuaiba were so inadequate that the unit’s own force-protection assessments had “recommended against positioning any personnel” there at all.
The investigation Warren referenced in her post traces back to April 2026, when she joined Sens. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) in launching an initial inquiry into whether Hegseth had failed to take basic steps to protect troops during Operation Epic Fury. That same month, at a House Armed Services Committee hearing, Ryan pressed Hegseth directly on the contradiction between his public statements and soldiers’ accounts of what happened at Port Shuaiba, but the defense secretary “largely dodged the line of inquiry.”
Also in April, Warren questioned Adm. Frank M. Bradley, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing about reports that service members with traumatic brain injuries were experiencing delays in receiving care.
By May, Warren’s office said its oversight work had uncovered that the State Department never tasked U.S. Transportation Command with assisting the evacuation of non-government Americans from the Middle East, despite tens of thousands of Americans being stranded in the region at the start of the war.
The Washington Post’s July 12 report added new detail, finding that survivors of the strike believed generals had ignored advance warnings about the base’s vulnerability, and that some wounded troops flown to Germany for treatment were told hospitals there could not admit them and were left waiting in barracks. Others reportedly went nearly a month without proper treatment for traumatic brain injuries even after being transferred from Germany to Fort Hood, Texas.
Lawmakers also raised concerns about the independence of the Army’s internal review of the strike, noting that it was initially assigned to a mid-grade officer within the affected unit before being elevated to a more senior officer at U.S. Army Central — the same command structure involved in the attack — rather than to an outside investigator.
Adding to the scrutiny, the Democrats’ Wednesday letter noted that the Defense Department last week revised its official casualty count for the war, lowering the number of American service members killed from 18 to 14 and reclassifying the deaths under “Overseas Operations” rather than Operation Epic Fury. The lawmakers called the move “shameful and a complete and utter disrespect to these service members, their loved ones, and those who served alongside them,” adding that it “dishonors their ultimate sacrifice to attempt to hide the real costs of this war from the American people.”
In the letter, the lawmakers wrote that the new reports were “emblematic of a broader pattern of the Trump administration’s blatant dismissal and disregard for the injuries and deaths of service members in this war,” and pressed Hegseth 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.” They gave the Pentagon a deadline of Aug. 12, 2026, to respond.
Eleven other members of Congress signed the Wednesday letter alongside Warren and Ryan: Sens. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), and Reps. Gil Cisneros (D-Calif.), Jason Crow (D-Colo.), Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.), Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), Derek Tran (D-Calif.), Chris Deluzio (D-Pa.) and Maggie Goodlander (D-N.H.).
Ryan, an Army veteran of the Iraq War, told the Post that the effort extends beyond a single incident. “The need for this investigation goes beyond the Shuaiba attack — it’s about taking accountability and protecting our service members,” he said. The Pentagon told The Hill it would respond directly to the lawmakers rather than commenting publicly.
Warren, the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Personnel, has repeatedly pressed the Trump administration over its conduct of the Iran war since fighting began earlier this year, from evacuation failures at the State Department and TRANSCOM to delays in treating troops with combat-related brain injuries. Her Friday post keeps that pressure squarely on Hegseth, with the Pentagon’s response to the latest round of questions due by Aug. 12.