Graves are being prepared for the civilian victims of the US-Israeli attack on a girls’ school in Minab.Image: keystone
The USA and Israel have been attacking Iran for almost five months. Thousands of people have already died during the bombing. But the exact numbers are as varied as they are opaque.
July 21, 2026, 8:45 p.mJuly 21, 2026, 8:45 p.m
On July 17, an Iranian airstrike hits the US military base Muwaffaq Salti in Jordan. A female and male soldier from the US Army are killed. A day later, the Pentagon announced the deaths of the two service members on social media and Central Command CENTCOM announced Press release out of here. At the same time, three more air strikes hit US bases in the country, injuring dozens more US soldiers.
In addition to the injured, numerous helicopters were also damaged in the attacks, said an anonymous source to the “New York Times”. The Pentagon is still officially silent about these injuries.
14 or 18 dead?
Just on Monday, the Pentagon announced that over 100 US troops had been injured in military clashes with Iran in the last two weeks. Sean Pernell, Pentagon media spokesman, posted on social media: “Nearly 100 military personnel have been classified as injured to some extent since July 7.”
Parnell further referred to the Pentagon databasewhich always shows the latest numbers of injured and dead in the US Army. At that point, the database had been at the same level of 427 injured and 14 dead for weeks. As the Washington Post reports, the status of the database was suddenly updated on Monday evening to 447 injuries and 18 deaths.
Only a short time later and without further explanation from the Pentagon, the numbers were returned to the level before Monday evening. At the time of writing, the numbers have been revised again to 18 dead and 447 injured.
How accurate the data is remains uncertain. Because CENTCOM does not officially have to release any data on killed or injured soldiers. Especially if injured people can return to duty quickly, they never appear in the US Army’s statistics.
Data propaganda
Who keeps the statistics and what is published makes a difference, and not just in U.S. Army losses. Depending on the source, the number of Iranian soldiers killed varies widely. According to data published by the Iranian intelligence service IRNA, around 1,800 Iranian soldiers have died in action. At the same time, the Israeli military reports that over 7,650 members of the Iranian armed forces have been killed.
But what is certain are the massive differences in the number of dead and injured between the two sides. While the losses of US troops can still be compiled from individual newspaper reports and Pentagon press releases, and even all the names of the dead are known, Iran complains of far more dead and injured troops.
The civilian deaths show a similar picture. HRANAa human rights organization in Iran, reported in April that 1,701 civilians had died, including around 254 children. At the same time, Iran’s Ministry of Health reports around 2,000 deaths. But the numbers cannot be independently verified by all sides and exclude the undetermined number of people killed in the protests in Iran at the beginning of the year.
The Iranian Organization for Legal Medicine (ILMO) suggests that at least 3,000 Iranians have died since the USA and Israel started the war against Iran. These numbers include the 168 children and 14 adults who attended US missile strike on Shajarah Tayyebeh School for Girls have died. The Pentagon says it has not yet conducted a full review of this attack.