At least 22 U.S. service members have died in the Middle East in the months since February 2026, when Washington and Israel opened their war against Iran — four more than the 18 the Pentagon has publicly acknowledged — according to six people inside the Defense Department who know how the agency tracks casualties internally and who spoke with The Washington Post, per an account published September 18, 2026.
One of those officials put the toll at 23. Not all of the undisclosed deaths were tied directly to the fighting, that official said; some involved U.S. personnel who were in the region while hostilities were going on. The same official said the war has also claimed the lives of three American contractors stationed in the region.
What the Public Portal Shows
The Pentagon logs fatalities and injuries on the Defense Casualty Analysis System, a portal open to anyone. As of the September 18 report, the database listed 14 service members as having died during Operation Epic Fury, the name President Donald Trump’s administration chose for the war, with four more deaths filed under a separate “Overseas Operations” category. More than 820 U.S. personnel have been wounded since the war began. The insiders said they were frustrated that the remaining deaths appear nowhere in that public tally.
Names Missing From the Database
Two service members who died in the Middle East on missions unrelated to the Iran war were also absent from the portal. Sgt. Devin Seibel was killed May 31 during a training exercise in Iraq; Maj. Sorffly Davius died March 6 in Kuwait, felled by a medical emergency that has not been described.
The bookkeeping carries consequences for families. A service member’s death triggers a line-of-duty investigation, which helps determine the survivor benefits relatives are eligible to receive — so faulty records can reach surviving kin.
The department’s record-keeping had already provoked anger in July, when the Pentagon stripped from the system the names of four service members killed by Iranian strikes that month, only to restore them later under a different heading. Pentagon spokespeople blamed “temporary data disruptions” and said the matter would be resolved.
Nor is it the first time the department run by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, now called the Department of War, has been accused of holding back crucial information about American operations abroad. American airstrikes in Yemen over the course of 2025 left hundreds of civilians dead or wounded, casualties the Pentagon had neither publicly acknowledged nor fully accounted for to Congress when they surfaced in reporting in August 2026. A Pentagon official told NBC News in August that the department would submit its annual report on casualties from U.S. military operations during the 2025 calendar year in the coming months.
Polygraphs and a Leak Task Force
Some of the military’s most senior officers sat for polygraph tests in a sweeping leak investigation opened after classified details about U.S. stockpiles of advanced munitions appeared in the press, U.S. officials briefed on the matter told CBS News. Several dozen people were tested earlier in the summer of 2026, among them U.S. Central Command officials and other combatant commanders. Three of the sources, speaking anonymously, said Trump was furious about the leaks. Two said no one failed the questions designed to establish whether those officials had talked to reporters.
Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was not polygraphed, a senior Pentagon official said. The FBI took no part in the testing; the military has its own investigators.
In July, Hegseth announced a joint Pentagon and Justice Department task force to track down and prosecute suspected leakers, widening an effort that had started inside his own office. He handed the Pentagon’s Office of General Counsel, led by Earl Matthews, sweeping power to demand records, information and help with leak inquiries, and staff were told to put those requests first and answer within two days. That announcement landed only days after federal prosecutors issued subpoenas to a handful of New York Times journalists over their reporting on security shortcomings aboard Trump’s Qatari-donated Air Force One — subpoenas it later withdrew.
Lawmakers have pressed for their own accounting. Hegseth and Caine testified April 30 before the Senate Armed Services Committee on the cost of the Iran war and the drawdown of U.S. munitions stockpiles, after six hours of questioning by House lawmakers. Sen. Elizabeth Warren used her time to press Hegseth on insider trading around Iran war developments.
Anger From Military Families
Trump has drawn repeated criticism for the way he talks about the war’s dead. In July, he was on hand as the remains of an American service member were brought home in a dignified transfer. That same month he published a Truth Social post that appeared to play down the number of fatalities in the Iran war by setting it against the far larger death tolls of earlier conflicts, and he made similar comments again earlier in September. Relatives of the fallen also blasted him that July, saying he seemed to invent statements and attribute them to the dead troops.
“It’s crystal clear to me that this is a disgraceful political stunt ahead of a major election,” Karie Fugett, an author and the widow of Marine Corps Corporal Jimmy Cleveland II, told HuffPost. The president, she said, understands that no conflict in recent memory has been as unpopular as his war with Iran, and he is terrified of what voters will do about it.