WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a sharp public rejection of a Washington Post report alleging that the Pentagon has underreported the number of U.S. service member deaths linked to the ongoing conflict with Iran.
According to the interview video, Hegseth dismissed the story as based on anonymous sources and described it as a deliberate effort to undermine the administration’s military campaign.
Hegseth said the claims were “totally made up” and “a lie,” arguing that the United States would never conceal combat deaths of its troops. “It’s always anonymous sources with those jokers,” he said of the newspaper.
“The Washington Post doesn’t have any credibility and hasn’t had any for a very long time.” He added that even if officials wanted to hide a death, “we never would, and we never could,” citing the country’s care for service members’ lives and the practical impossibility of concealing such losses.
The response came one day after the Post published an article citing six unnamed U.S. officials familiar with internal Defense Department casualty data.
Those officials claimed the true death toll since the start of operations in late February exceeded the 18 fatalities listed in the Pentagon’s public Defense Casualty Analysis System.
Details of the Washington Post Report
The Post’s Sept. 18 article stated that five of the officials put the number of military fatalities at least at 22, while a sixth said 23 service members had died since Feb. 28, when the United States and Israel launched what the administration calls Operation Epic Fury.
The newspaper noted that not all of the additional deaths were necessarily caused by hostile action tied directly to Iranian forces. Some involved personnel serving in the Middle East amid the broader hostilities.
The public database at the time of the report listed 14 deaths under Operation Epic Fury and four under a separate “Overseas Operations” category created after a July ceasefire collapsed.
The Post said details on the identities, timing, locations, and causes of the undisclosed deaths remained unclear. It also reported that three U.S. contractors in the region had died since combat began, according to one of the officials.
The Pentagon declined to answer the newspaper’s specific questions about the discrepancy before publication.
Earlier this summer, the same database faced scrutiny after four deaths were temporarily removed from the Epic Fury tally and later reclassified under the Overseas Operations heading. Officials at the time attributed the changes to temporary data issues.
Hegseth’s Full Response
Hegseth framed the story as politically motivated. “It’s a headline they want to try to make us look bad, the president look bad, and try to undermine the historic success we’ve had in that conflict,” he said. He urged the public to stop giving the Post credibility, stating that the outlet “hates the president more than they love the country.”
Hegseth called the report “DISGUSTING and FAKE. A complete LIE” and said the newspaper was “worse than Iranian state media.”
He emphasized that combat deaths are never hidden, pointing to the formal processes of casualty notification, dignified transfers at Dover Air Force Base, and line-of-duty investigations that accompany every service member death.
The Casualty Figures
Public records show 18 U.S. military deaths associated with the Iran conflict as of mid-September, along with more than 800 wounded. Some of those deaths occurred in Iranian missile and drone attacks on bases in Jordan and elsewhere.
Others stemmed from nonhostile incidents, including training accidents and medical emergencies in the region. Two service members whose deaths the Post said were omitted from the main public tally-Maj.
Sorffly Davius, who died of undetermined causes in Kuwait in March, and Sgt. Devin Seibel, killed in a training incident in Iraq in May, had been previously acknowledged by the Pentagon in separate statements but were not listed under the primary Iran-war categories.
