El Pentágono admite casi 100 heridos en los ataques de Irán

The Pentagon has finally acknowledged that nearly 100 U.S. troops have been injured in attacks attributed to Iran over the past two weeks, marking a rare admission that contradicts its earlier public statements. This revelation followed persistent reporting by The Intercept, which uncovered a systemic undercount of casualties, leading one U.S. government official to describe the situation as a “casualty cover-up.” The disclosure came just days after an unnamed U.S. official informed The Intercept that recent Iranian strikes had caused far more injuries than officially recorded, with “dozens” requiring medical care. Sean Parnell, a Pentagon spokesperson, initially dismissed claims of a cover-up as “baseless and malicious,” but later conceded that “nearly 100 service members were deemed to have some degree of injury since July 7.” Despite this admission, the official Pentagon database, known as the Defense Casualty Analysis System (DCAS), continued to display no recorded wounds among U.S. forces during July as of early Tuesday morning. The discrepancy highlights ongoing concerns about transparency and accuracy in casualty reporting. The latest casualties include three Army soldiers killed in ballistic missile attacks on Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan. Private First Class Isabella Gonzales, 19, of Carrollton, Texas, and Lieutenant Tyler James Feehan, 25, of Ewa Beach, Hawaii, were among those killed in action. A third soldier is listed as missing, though officials confirmed that “unidentified remains” recovered after the attack were “certainly” those of the missing individual. The body was so severely damaged that a complete identification process was necessary. In Iraq, Army Sergeant Michael Emmanuel Swinton, 30, of Fayetteville, North Carolina, was killed, and another soldier was wounded during a controlled detonation of an Iranian attack drone at Erbil Air Base. These incidents occurred alongside attacks on U.S. military installations in Bahrain, Kuwait, and Syria, according to the semi-official Tasnim News Agency, affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The attacks reportedly followed the failure of U.S. military objectives and the collapse of April and June ceasefire agreements. An unnamed official suggested that Iran had developed tactics to bypass U.S. air defenses through a combination of ballistic missiles and drones. Central Command and the Office of the Secretary of Defense did not respond to detailed inquiries from The Intercept regarding the attacks and related casualties. Parnell stated that casualty information is publicly accessible via the Defense Casualty Analysis System, intended for Congress and the president. However, the system was not updated on Monday morning, offering outdated data from Friday. By Monday afternoon, the number of wounded on certain DCAS pages increased from 427 to 447, yet the official tally of troops “wounded in action” during July remained at zero as of early Tuesday. An unnamed U.S. official criticized the Pentagon’s handling of casualty records as “official ineptitude” that serves the interests of the Trump administration. Previous investigations by The Intercept revealed that DCAS had omitted hundreds of casualties without explanation, and the system had even reduced its count by 15 without justification. For months, the Pentagon has largely ignored requests for clarification or additional information from The Intercept. As the situation continues to evolve, the Pentagon faces mounting pressure to provide accurate and timely updates on casualties, particularly given the increasing frequency of attacks against U.S. forces in the region. With tensions escalating and the potential for further conflict looming, the reliability of casualty reporting will remain a critical issue for both military leadership and the public.