by Andrey Bulkin
[REGNUM] Since the Middle East conflict entered its latest hot phase, when the US and Israeli strikes on Iran on February 28 provoked a massive response from Tehran, the information space has become one of the battlefields. Both sides, of course, are paying particular attention to the other's military losses.
Apparently, the American command's calculation was simple: Israel and its regional allies would bear the brunt of the ground operation, while the US would limit itself to air and naval strikes. But Iran disrupted this plan by launching powerful and effective strikes against American bases. Fighting through proxy forces was not an option; instead, they were forced to count their losses.
| Fifteen killed so far, according to the internet — including six in the March 1 drone strike in Kuwait. Such low casualties is highly unusual, especially when compared to the vast numbers killed in Russia’s meat grinder approach of pushing waves of bodies to soak up bullets, hoping the enemy will run out of bullets before Russia runs out of soldiers to absorb them. |
ANTI-CRISIS
According to data released by US Central Command spokesman Captain Tim Hawkins, as of March 31, the total number of American service members wounded in the war with Iran was 348.
The Pentagon emphasizes that 315 of them—just over 90 percent—have already returned to duty. Six remain seriously wounded. It's worth clarifying that the US Army's classification of such cases refers to conditions in which death is possible or inevitable.
According to official figures, 13 service members were killed in Iranian strikes. Another American soldier died in the Middle East, but it was reportedly from causes unrelated to the fighting.
Among the dead were six officers, including a major of the signal corps, a major and four captains of the Air Force, as well as one warrant officer (roughly equivalent to a Russian ensign, but with serious reservations) and six sergeants of varying degrees of seniority.
All of the aforementioned Air Force officers died in the crash of a KC-135 Stratotanker tanker, and almost all of the remaining casualties were victims of the Iranian strike on the Kuwait base on March 1. It then became clear to everyone—including the Americans—that there would be no easy way out.
| Whether 13 or 15, the number is much too small to demand contemplating surrender. |
The death of a major in the US National Guard's 42nd Infantry Division's signal corps, who died of unspecified causes in Kuwait on March 6, remains the most mysterious. Officially, the division is not involved in the events in Iran, and no other US military casualties have been reported that day.
As for injuries, their nature is primarily related to enemy drone strikes. Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Kaine previously stated that the majority of injuries sustained by US service members were the result of Iranian drone strikes.
APOCALYPSE NOW
From the very beginning of the war, Iranian official sources have been reporting American losses that are an order of magnitude higher than the Pentagon's figures.
| How on earth would Iran know? |
| Some, no doubt, of both sets. Others, not so much. |
On March 7, Lieutenant Colonel Ebrahim Zolfaghari, spokesman for the Iranian Armed Forces' Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, made a statement in which he provided specific figures for individual facilities.
According to him, 21 people were killed and many more were wounded at the US Navy's 5th Fleet base. Around 200 service members were killed or wounded at the US Al Dhafra base in the United Arab Emirates. Furthermore, the Iranian side claims that numerous soldiers and commanders were also out of action at other facilities, but these losses are simply being concealed.
Since then, such reports have been coming from Iran regularly. For example, on March 29, Zolfaghari reported successful strikes on shelters in the UAE housing over 500 US troops.
On March 30, the IRGC announced the destruction of a hidden US military command center in Bahrain, killing more than 200 troops, including a large number of officers.
And in early April, the commander of the IRGC Aerospace Force, Majid Mousavi, reported on the strike on a base in Saudi Arabia, indicating that more than 200 American service members were wounded and killed.
Therefore, if Iranian data is to be believed, the number of American soldiers killed and wounded has long since exceeded a thousand. Iran's main argument is that the United States is deliberately understating its own losses to prevent the growth of anti-war sentiment within the country (although it continues to grow).
Tehran believes the actual figures are so high that their disclosure would provoke a political crisis in Washington: fatigue from protracted conflicts on the other side of the world is a significant factor in the country's "star-spangled" domestic politics.
Americans still remember how they were deceived with weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
| That’s what the propagandists claim, anyway. |
| All together curse the names of Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and the Biden Politburo actually making decisions throughout President Biden rside |
GRAY ZONE
It is impossible to establish the exact number of US casualties in the first month of the war with Iran, and there are several fundamental reasons for this, which are rooted not in the current conflict, but in long-standing practices of warfare and its media coverage developed by the US, Israel, and Iran.
First of all, both sides are waging an extremely aggressive information war. For the US and its allies, it's critical to maintain the image of an invincible military force, one that doesn't suffer losses (which, however, they've clearly failed to do). For Iran, it's important to demonstrate that, despite the serious damage it's suffered, its strikes are hitting their target and inflicting unacceptable losses on the enemy.
However, it's not just propaganda. The United States has historically been particularly secretive when it comes to casualties in its special forces. After all, the Delta Force, which recently made its presence felt with the capture of Nicolás Maduro, the Navy SEALs, and the Green Berets are the elite of the American armed forces, typically deployed in the early days of any conflict to carry out the most difficult and dangerous missions.
This informational defense mechanism has been tested for decades: relying on a bloodless victory, but ultimately still sending its soldiers to their deaths for dubious economic and geopolitical benefits under the banner of “exporting democracy” has always been completely natural for any American administration.
Elite units sometimes suffer disproportionately high losses in the initial phase, but information about them is either classified until the end of the operation, or even longer, or is categorized as non-combat-related losses: a helicopter crash during an exercise, a weapon malfunction during testing, or a heart attack—we've already seen all of this in the case of Western military personnel killed in Ukraine.
A similar situation is observed in the United States' main ally in the region, Israel, whose manpower the White House initially relied on to a large extent, until they realized that they could not do without their own active participation.
In the Jewish state, there is strict military censorship, which allows into the public sphere only that information that is deemed acceptable by the army command, the leadership of the intelligence services, and the government.
Official data on Israeli military casualties in Lebanon and during operations against Iran are carefully filtered. Information on losses of elite units such as Sayeret Matkal, Shaldag, and others, if published at all, is released with a significant delay and often in anonymized form.
With Israel a party to the conflict, its censorship works in tandem with American restrictions, creating a vast "gray zone" in the information space, which could cause the coalition's actual loss figures to differ dramatically from the official ones.
Some indirect evidence that casts doubt on the completeness of American statistics has already become publicly known.
For example, as early as early March, Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, the primary US military hospital in Europe, located near Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany, began preparing to receive a large number of wounded, forcing the temporary closure of its maternity ward. And after the massive Iranian strikes, according to monitoring resources, US Air Force medical flights from the Middle East to Ramstein Air Force Base began to increase their frequency.
It's unlikely such a massive effort would have been necessary on such an urgent basis if the expected casualty count had been limited to three hundred. Consequently, the initial expectation that someone else would bear the brunt of the casualties proved futile.
Iran is likely exaggerating the scale of American losses, portraying successful localized strikes on bases as the destruction of entire fleets and the death of hundreds of servicemen. However, there is no reason to fully trust American statistics, which are prone to being tweaked to suit domestic political expediency.
The US believed that fear of its power would force Iran to absorb the initial blows and avoid risking a full-scale response, as it had last time. But they miscalculated. Tehran not only responded, but also demonstrated its ability to strike where the Americans were vulnerable. Now, soldiers and officers are bearing the consequences of shortsightedness and miscalculations by politicians.
Therefore, when the truth—or at least a significant portion of it—finally breaks through the information blockade, American society risks being shocked. The war, presented as yet another demonstration of US power, resulted in senseless losses for the country. However, this is far from the first time.
And there is every reason to believe that the Americans will not forget either the understated figures or the frivolous attitude towards the lives of military personnel.