House Democrat: Trump not sharing Iran war casualty statistics with Congress

House House Democrat: Trump not sharing Iran war casualty statistics with Congress Comments: by Ryan Mancini - 07/21/26 10:49 AM ET Comments: Link copied by Ryan Mancini - 07/21/26 10:49 AM ET Comments: Link copied

NOW PLAYING

Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) on Monday said President Trump has not shared Iran war casualty statistics with Congress, a point of contention after three U.S. service members were killed over the last week as hostilities with Iran resumed.

Smith, the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, told CNN’s Erin Burnett’s on “OutFront” that there has been no transparency from the president or the Pentagon about the full extent of equipment losses and casualty statistics. He said Trump was “a dictator running this country.”

“We have never had a situation where we’ve been at war and the president has treated it as his own war, where he doesn’t have to share information with the American people or with Congress,” Smith told Burnett. “I mean, this is a frightening situation.”

Burnett pointed out Smith’s Armed Services Committee role and said it “would seem to me definitional that if anybody knew the extent of losses” during the war, it would be him.

“Yeah, and we’re digging,” he replied. “My staff is constantly in contact with as many people as we can at the Pentagon. You know, they are just not being transparent. We have to sort of pull it out of them or find it in one place or another. So look, I mean –– the lack of transparency certainly is concerning.”

The Hill has reached out to the White House and the Pentagon for comment.

Fears are growing that the deaths of two service members killed in strikes on air bases in Jordan and a third service member in Iraq could push Trump toward escalating the conflict. The recent deaths have increased the U.S. death toll to 17 since the start of the conflict in February.

The Pentagon identified 1st Lt. Tyler Feehan as killed in action on Friday, while Pvt. Isabella Gonzales was killed in action on Saturday amid Iran’s attack on Muwaffaq Salti Air Base.

Officials on Tuesday identified Sgt. Michael Emmanuel Swinton, 30, of Fayetteville, N.C., as the service member killed during a “controlled detonation” of unexploded ordnance from a downed Iranian one-way attack drone.

The Pentagon also confirmed on Monday that nearly 100 service members in the U.S. Central Command (Centcom) theater have been injured since strikes resumed in July, with 96 percent of them returning to duty.

Defense Department officials have disputed claims reported in The New York Times suggesting that the Pentagon has concealed dozens of injuries to U.S. service members, though the Pentagon has stated that it is not required to release information about U.S. military injuries.

“Injuries in the military encompass everything from minor sprained ankles during routine training to incidents entirely unrelated to combat operations,” spokesperson Sean Parnell said in a statement on Monday.

Parnell said that obscuring casualty numbers was “baseless” and “malicious,” accusing the Times of “cherry-picking raw numbers without context,” which “paints a deliberately misleading and incomplete picture.”