Pentagon changes how it reports casualties in Iran war

WASHINGTON — Facing criticism that it had minimized the number of U.S. soldiers killed and wounded in the war with Iran, the Pentagon on Sunday changed the way it reports casualties as it announced a higher number of wounded service members this month.

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In an unusual new accounting method, casualties since July 7, when the ceasefire began unraveling and fighting escalated, are not listed on a Pentagon website with others since the war began, but rather on a new webpage labeled generically as “overseas operations casualties.” This means that a full accounting of the overall casualties requires adding numbers from separate web pages.Under the new system, the Defense Casualty Analysis System restored the deaths of four soldiers killed last weekend in the war that had been removed from the website — but in a separate, unexplained category. The change also raised the number of those wounded to 142 more than were previously reported by the Pentagon since July 7.

The official number of soldiers wounded since that date is now listed as 207, for a total of 624 since the war began on Feb. 28. The total number listed as killed is 18.

Last week, Sean Parnell, the chief Pentagon spokesperson, insisted that the number of U.S. troops injured since July 7 was fewer than 100. The Pentagon had not previously disclosed a number of several Iranian strikes on bases in the region that housed U.S. troops.

“Claims of concealment are fabrications meant to further distress the American people in the wake of three service members killed in action,” Parnell said in a statement at the time.

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A Pentagon spokesperson on Sunday referred questions about the new numbers and system for reporting to the White House, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Last week, The New York Times reported that the Pentagon had lowered the number of service members killed in the Iran war to 14 from 18, a move that prompted outrage among many veterans, military families and lawmakers.

The change was made because the four service members killed recently in Jordan and Iraq had died after a ceasefire had been reached between Iran and the United States in April, military officials told the Times on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive internal discussions.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.