Sen. Elizabeth Warren accused the Trump administration of concealing the scope of American troop injuries in the Iran war, saying Trump has failed to justify a conflict that has now killed 18 U.S. service members and injured more than 400.
“The Trump admin WITHHELD that nearly 100 U.S. troops were injured by Iran in the past 2 weeks,” Warren wrote on X. “400+ Americans have been injured. 18 service members have been killed. It’s a tremendous sacrifice. But Trump can’t even explain how America is better off or how his war will end.”
Warren, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and Ranking Member of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, was referencing reporting that U.S. Central Command did not publicly disclose three Iranian strikes on U.S. forces in Jordan that injured dozens of troops and damaged several helicopters in the week before a subsequent attack killed two American soldiers.
Pentagon chief spokesman Sean Parnell has disputed characterizations that the department concealed the injuries, telling reporters that nearly 100 service members “were deemed to have some degree of injury” since July 7, with 96 percent having returned to duty, and that “the vast majority of injuries experienced were minor concussions.” Parnell has pointed to the Pentagon’s Defense Casualty Analysis System, which he said is regularly updated with casualty figures available to the public, though the system’s public data does not break out casualties by specific attack.
The Defense Casualty Analysis System listed 427 U.S. service members injured in the Iran conflict as of July 20, alongside a death toll that has since risen to 18 following the July 21 identification of Sgt. Michael Emmanuel Swinton, 30, of Fayetteville, North Carolina, who was killed in Iraq during a controlled detonation of a downed Iranian drone.
Warren has repeatedly pressed military and administration officials over the course of the war, which began Feb. 28. In an April 30 Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Warren said “Americans are paying a high price for Donald Trump’s war with Iran” and questioned Hegseth over reports of possible insider trading tied to Iran war developments, according to an official Senate transcript of the exchange.
In March, Warren separately criticized the administration’s handling of alliances during the war, telling Adm. Richard Correll, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, that Trump’s foreign policy approach had damaged relationships with longstanding U.S. allies. “It is not only an embarrassment when the President begs, and our allies say no, it is a national security threat because our enemies take note of that,” Warren said.
Warren has also pressed for greater transparency on the war’s financial costs, joining Sens. Jeff Merkley and Chuck Schumer and other lawmakers in urging the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office to determine the war’s true price tag, according to a letter from her office.
In that April hearing, Warren detailed a pattern she said suggested insiders were profiting from advance knowledge of the war’s developments. “On March 23rd, just 14 minutes before Trump unexpectedly posted about ‘very good conversations’ on ending the war, traders suddenly bet $500 million on the price of oil, which, once Trump made his announcement, immediately dropped,” Warren said, according to the same official transcript. “It happened again on April 7th. Then again, on April 21st.”
Warren has also raised concerns about the military’s legal oversight during the conflict. At a March 20 Armed Services Committee hearing, she questioned commanders of U.S. Northern Command and U.S. Southern Command about the effects of sidelining the military’s Judge Advocate General Corps, the officers responsible for providing independent legal advice on the conduct of operations, and how that could affect civilian harm as the war continued.
Warren’s latest statement comes the same day Hegseth testified before the Senate Appropriations Committee on the administration’s $87.6 billion supplemental funding request, which includes $67.1 billion for the Iran war. During that hearing, Hegseth provided an updated cost estimate of $37.5 billion spent on the war to date and faced pointed questioning from Democratic senators over his past statements characterizing Iran’s military capabilities as largely destroyed.
Neither the White House nor the Pentagon has issued a direct public response to Warren’s latest statement.