How Many US Soldiers Have Died in the Iran War?

Iranian attacks have killed 11 Americans, and every one of them was an Army soldier. The Pentagon files these deaths as hostile: killed in action or died of wounds.

The deadliest attack came on March 1, the second day of the war, when an Iranian drone struck a tactical operations center at Port Shuaiba in Kuwait. It killed six Army Reserve soldiers of the 103rd Sustainment Command, based in Des Moines, Iowa: Maj. Jeffrey O’Brien, Chief Warrant Officer 3 Robert Marzan, Capt. Cody Khork, Sgt. 1st Class Nicole Amor, Master Sgt. Noah Tietjens and Sgt. Declan Coady, who was 20. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters on March 2 that the drone had got through US air defenses. An attack the same day on Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, the hub described in our explainer on US troops in Saudi Arabia, wounded Staff Sgt. Benjamin Pennington, 26, of a missile defense battery. He died on March 8.

The other four died in July, after the ceasefire announced on April 7 broke down and fighting resumed on July 7. Overnight on July 17 to 18, Iranian ballistic missiles and drones hit Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan and killed three air defense soldiers: 1st Lt. Tyler Feehan, 25, Pfc. Isabella Gonzales, 19, and Staff Sgt. Angel Rampersad, 28, who was first listed as missing. On July 19, Staff Sgt. Michael Swinton, 30, was killed at Erbil Air Base in Iraq while working to destroy a downed one-way attack drone.

Twelve service members have died in non-hostile circumstances. Half of them were lost in one aircraft: a KC-135 Stratotanker, call sign ZEUS 95, that went down over western Iraq on March 12 with six airmen aboard, drawn from active-duty and Ohio Air National Guard refueling units. A second KC-135 in the same incident landed safely. US Central Command said the crash was not caused by hostile or friendly fire, and the investigation is still open. Our report on the KC-135 tankers still under repair covers the other tankers damaged in the war.

The other six died one at a time. Army National Guard Maj. Sorffly Davius, 46, died in Kuwait on March 6; the Army said his death was not combat-related. Navy Cmdr. Gabriel Edwards, 42, was lost on July 1 when an MH-60S helicopter went down in the Arabian Sea, and the Navy said there was no sign of hostile action. Petty Officer 1st Class Sarai Ramirez-Galvan, 29, a Navy explosive ordnance disposal technician, died on September 14, and Bianca Wilkerson, 37, an Army officer, died in Doha, Qatar, on September 18. Two Air Force members died in October; the Pentagon has not yet released their names. Three of these later deaths are still listed as pending a final cause category.

The Pentagon counts 868 service members wounded in action as of November 13, 2026. Of those, 418 were wounded between February 28 and early July, and 450 since fighting resumed on July 7. The worst months were March, with 343 wounded, and July, with 351. Army soldiers account for 660 of the wounded, which reflects who staffs the air defense batteries, logistics hubs and bases that Iranian missiles and drones have targeted.

The Pentagon splits the war into two reporting categories and has changed how it files cases. Deaths from February 28 to July 6 sit under Operation Epic Fury, which lists 15. Deaths from July 7 onward sit under a separate category called Overseas Operations, which lists 8. Anyone who reads only the Epic Fury table will see 15, not 23.

The split set off a dispute in late July, when the four soldiers killed in Jordan and Iraq dropped out of the war’s tally, cutting it from 18 to 14, and then reappeared under the new category. Acting Pentagon press secretary Joel Valdez blamed temporary data disruptions. Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee wrote to Hegseth asking for an explanation, and Democrats on the House Oversight Committee sought the records behind the change. In September, Hegseth called reports of a higher toll than the official 19 “a complete lie”; in early October the Pentagon raised its count to 21 by adding Maj. Davius and a Navy sailor who died in September. On October 13 it added a Pending Adjudication page for cases it has not yet categorized. Deaths in the separate campaign against the Islamic State group are counted apart from all of these.

It is far lower than in America’s large ground wars, and all of the hostile deaths so far happened on bases in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Iraq that were hit by drones or missiles. The 1991 Gulf War killed 147 US troops in hostile action, by the Pentagon’s own record. Operation Inherent Resolve, the campaign against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria since 2014, has cost 124 American lives, 25 of them in hostile action. The Iran war reached 23 deaths in eight and a half months. Its money cost has grown much faster: the Pentagon told Congress the war had cost $47.1 billion as of October 16, as our explainer on what the Iran war has cost shows.