The figures underscore the continuing human cost of the Trump administration’s aggression against Iran, even as senior US officials have sought to portray the war as limited and downplay the extent of American losses.
Of the 880 US troops officially recorded as wounded or dead during the conflict, 444 casualties occurred after July 7, according to Pentagon figures.
The US President Donald Trump’s military campaign has left nearly 100 US service members wounded or dead this month alone, according to the Pentagon.
The latest additions included 29 Navy sailors and eight Marines, following an attack that a senior Iranian official said involved a new “anti-ship missile” and had “created hell for the Americans.”
The eight Marines were injured in a cruise missile attack on September 14, according to two US officials who spoke to The Intercept on condition of anonymity.
The Marines were aboard an unidentified vessel in the Strait of Hormuz and may have suffered brain trauma among other injuries, the officials said.
A cargo ship was also struck by a projectile in the Strait of Hormuz on the same day, according to the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations organization.
The officials declined to say whether Marines had been stationed aboard commercial vessels transiting the strategic waterway.
The US Navy did not respond to The Intercept’s questions about when and where the sailors were wounded.
A Navy official said the casualties had been “fully validated” but declined to identify the affected “units.”
The latest casualty increase comes as further evidence emerges of the intensity of Iranian attacks against US forces across the region.
US Air Force personnel alone faced more than 1,200 “alarm reds” — the official designation for an imminent attack involving missiles, aircraft or ground forces — during a 38-day period earlier this year, according to Air Force chief of staff Gen. Ken Wilsbach.
Those Iranian attacks also resulted in more than 420 deployments of explosive ordnance disposal technicians, Wilsbach said.
Such operations have carried deadly risks for US personnel.
Army Sgt. 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 Iraq’s Erbil Air Base in July.
Meanwhile, senior US officials have offered sharply different descriptions of the conflict and its consequences.
Trump recently described the confrontation with Iran as “small potatoes.”
Vice President JD Vance said it was not a “war.”
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick went further, declaring: “There haven’t been American deaths, it’s really just an economic choke-out.”
The official Pentagon count, however, records at least 19 personnel killed in the war, including 11 who died from hostile fire.
The actual number of US military deaths connected to the conflict in the region is higher, according to reporting cited by The Intercept.
The latest known fatality was Capt. Bianca Wilkerson, 37, of Norfolk, Virginia, who died on September 18 from a “coronary issue,” according to her brother.
Her brother said Wilkerson had returned from Saudi Arabia on September 10 and was traveling back when she died aboard a flight, according to the Virginian-Pilot.
Questions over the official casualty figures have also persisted.
For nearly six months, The Intercept has reported what it described as anomalies in figures published through the Defense Casualty Analysis System, or DCAS, which tracks “deceased, wounded, ill or injured” service members for Congress and the White House.
On April 21, for example, the number of wounded-in-action troops fell by 15 without a public explanation from the War Department.
The Pentagon has not publicly addressed the discrepancies despite repeated questions over several months.
Earlier reporting by The Intercept also reported that the Pentagon’s official figures for dead and wounded personnel significantly undercounted casualties, citing one US government official who described the situation as a “casualty cover-up.”
The Washington Post recently raised similar questions about whether the Pentagon had suppressed casualty figures.
Self-styled War Secretary Pete Hegseth rejected that report, calling it “DISGUSTING and FAKE.”
The Pentagon’s list of military deaths also does not include Maj. Sorffly Davius, a signals and communication officer with the New York Army National Guard who was assigned to the headquarters of the 42nd Infantry Division and died while on duty at Camp Buehring, Kuwait, on March 6.
The military has maintained that Davius was serving as part of another mission.
A recent National Guard news release, however, said that when “Trump made the decision to attack Iran and launched Operation Epic Fury on Feb. 28, the division headquarters began conducting combat operations.”
The 42nd Infantry Division served as the primary headquarters for what Maj. Gen. Jack James, the division commander, described as the “largest and first long-range precision fires campaign in the history of the United States Army.”
James specifically honored Davius, whom the National Guard acknowledged was “conducting operations” when he died.
The timing of casualty reporting has also drawn scrutiny.
The eight Marines added to DCAS last week appeared in the official tally almost 10 days after the September 14 attack.
Two former officials who worked on the government’s casualty system said such a delay was unusual.
“We got it very quickly. We could report the number of casualties very fast,” Joan Crenshaw, who worked on DCAS during the so-called war on terror, previously told The Intercept, adding that the data was refreshed daily.
A current US official previously told The Intercept that recent reporting delays reflected a combination of incompetence and deliberate slow-walking of casualty information to limit public fallout.
Beyond the casualty figures, the conflict has exposed the continuing reach of Iran’s military response across the region.
Iran has used attack drones and advanced ballistic missiles to strike US military positions, with The Intercept previously reporting that Iranian attacks have challenged American air defenses.
Despite repeated claims by Trump and Hegseth that Iran’s military had been destroyed, Iran has attacked more than 15 US bases across the Middle East, according to information from US officials and Iranian reports.
US Central Command has said the strikes damaged or destroyed hundreds of facilities at American bases in Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Air Force personnel carried out 48 airfield repairs in little more than a month, according to Wilsbach.
The scale of the damage has also raised questions about repeated US claims that Iranian military capabilities had been effectively neutralized.
An Iranian missile and drone attack on February 28 destroyed Navy facilities in Manama, Bahrain, one of the United States’ most important military logistics hubs in the region.
The Pentagon maintained for months that the attacks had not significantly disrupted military operations.
Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao later acknowledged the extent of the damage, saying Iran “blew the hell out of Bahrain.”