Senate Democrats accuse Pentagon of failing to protect troops from Iran retaliation

An April 27 letter from 12 Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee accused Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s department of failing to provide “timely and comprehensive” casualty reporting as U.S. troops faced retaliation from Iran. The letter, signed by Elizabeth Warren, Mark Kelly, Kirsten Gillibrand and nine other senators, pressed for answers about a drone attack in Kuwait and the steps the Pentagon took to protect service members.

The dispute grew out of the opening days of the war with Iran, which began on Feb. 28 after President Donald Trump announced “major combat operations” and the United States and Israel launched large-scale strikes on military, government and infrastructure sites. Six American troops were killed in Kuwait in those first hours, including Maj. Jeffrey R. O’Brien, 45, of Indianola, Iowa, and Chief Warrant Officer 3 Robert Marzan, 54, of Sacramento, California, in what lawmakers have treated as a test of the Pentagon’s readiness and reporting.

The casualty figures climbed as the conflict widened. By March 20, 232 service members had been injured, and by July 20, 17 U.S. service members had been killed since the war began. Iranian drone and missile attacks also struck Bahrain and Kuwait, keeping the focus on whether commanders were tracking the threat closely enough and whether Congress was getting the full picture as losses mounted.

Hegseth has said the United States had enough munitions to keep fighting the Iran war “as long as we need to,” while CENTCOM said Iranian missile attacks had dropped 90% since the first day of the war. The financial burden has added another layer to the oversight fight: the Associated Press reported that Hegseth later estimated the war had cost $37.5 billion so far, and that the Pentagon sought $80 billion from Congress for Iran war costs.

For Senate Democrats, the issue was not only the toll in Kuwait and across the region, but whether the Pentagon was telling lawmakers enough, soon enough, about who was hurt, who was killed and what protections failed before Congress was asked to keep paying for the war.