Iran War Live Updates: Red Sea Turmoil Pushes Oil Past $100 a Barrel

Iran has already largely closed the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, throttling the world’s oil and gas supplies. The price of Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, dipped after the two sides agreed to a preliminary truce last month, but it has inched up again since the fighting resumed. Oil prices are now 40 percent higher than they were before the war started in February.

The Saudi authorities said there had been an attack on one ship, the Encelia, adding that the crew members were safe, without specifying the origin of the attack. The Saudi government has not commented on the Houthi claim regarding the second ship.

The steady escalation of the conflict over the past two weeks provided the backdrop for a vote in the House of Representatives on Thursday that, for a second time, asked Mr. Trump to seek Congress’ authorization to keep U.S. troops engaged in the war. Mr. Trump effectively ignored a similar rebuke last month, and later on Thursday, Republicans in the Senate blocked the measure from passing.

Neither the United States nor Iran has signaled much appetite for a return to negotiations. In recent days, Iranian and American officials have promised to respond to each other’s attacks with fresh ones of their own, with each trying to outlast the other.

U.S. Central Command, which coordinates military operations in the Middle East, said it had launched a wave of strikes overnight to degrade Iran’s ability to threaten commercial shipping, targeting Iranian drone and missile storage sites and air defenses.

That language, which the U.S. military has employed on a daily basis, does not explicitly acknowledge U.S. strikes on infrastructure that can be used for civilian purposes, like roads and ports. Such attacks could be considered war crimes under international law.

Mr. Trump has threatened to attack a bridge or power plant “any time the Islamic republic of Iran shoots at a ship in the Strait of Hormuz.”

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps said overnight that it had launched attacks on U.S. military targets in Jordan and Kuwait, including a communications tower, accusing U.S. forces of attacking equivalent infrastructure in Iran.

Here’s what else we’re covering:

• Attacks at border crossings: Two border crossings were attacked on Thursday, according to officials and videos on social media verified by The New York Times. It was not immediately clear who was responsible. The first attack occurred near the Shalamcheh border crossing between Iran and Iraq in Khuzestan Province. Two people were killed, according to Iranian officials. In what appeared to be a retaliatory strike, the Abdali border crossing between Kuwait and Iraq was hit hours later. Read more ›

• Saudi nuclear deal: Mr. Trump said on Thursday that a broad nuclear deal the United States signed with Saudi Arabia would hinge on the kingdom’s willingness to join the Abraham Accords, appearing to condition the agreement on Riyadh’s willingness to open diplomatic relations with Israel. Read more ›

The senators said the Pentagon’s system for tracking casualties, which the Defense Department has said is updated regularly, has reported “inconsistent casualty figures, raising additional questions about the transparency and reliability of the department’s public reporting and statements.”

The Pentagon said earlier this week that roughly 100 American troops had been injured by Iranian attacks since early July. The Defense Department did not disclose the latest casualties in Jordan and elsewhere in the Middle East until The New York Times reported on injuries from four attacks last week, the last of which, on Friday, killed three soldiers and wounded several others.

At least 18 U.S. service members have died in the war since it started on Feb. 28, and about 570 have been wounded so far.

The group has long portrayed itself as a frontline member of Iran’s so-called axis of resistance and has publicly tied itself to Iran’s fortunes. But while the Houthis are close to Iran, analysts describe their partnership as one shaped by both coordination and constraint.

Here’s what to know about the Houthis and their relationship with Iran.

Who are the Houthis?

The Houthis are Shiite militants who have been fighting Yemen’s internationally recognized government for about two decades. They overran the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, in 2014, forcing the government to flee to the southern city of Aden.

The following year, a Saudi-led coalition launched a bombing campaign to oust the militants but failed, leaving the Houthis in power in northern Yemen. Hundreds of thousands of people died from the violence, famine and disease that ensued in one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

The Houthis oppose Israel and the United States. The group is part of the so-called axis of resistance led by Iran, along with Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and armed groups in Syria and Iraq.

Fighting between the Houthis and the Saudi-backed Yemeni government subsided in recent years, and the United Nations helped broker a cease-fire in 2022.

Since then, the group has continued to launch attacks on its adversaries in the region. In the wake of the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel that killed over 1,200 people and Israel’s subsequent bombardment of the Gaza Strip that has killed more than 73,000 people, the Houthis disrupted international shipping by firing on passing vessels in the Red Sea.

Crucial to the Houthis’ power is the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a narrow waterway on Yemen’s southwest tip. The strait connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and is one of the world’s most important shipping routes.

Have the Houthis been involved in the war?

Until recently, the Houthis’ involvement in the broader Iran war had been halting and cautious. Experts said the group had been weakened by last year’s weekslong bombardment by the United States and Israel in Yemen — and forced into a careful calculation about how much of its dwindling arsenal it could afford to spend.

The new front in the war started to crack open earlier this month, when Houthi authorities accused Saudi Arabia of attacking Yemen’s main international airport in Sanaa in a dispute over an Iranian plane that tried to land there.

Analysts say Iran may have also urged the Houthis to disrupt shipping in the Red Sea. With the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed for months, the Red Sea has become a vital alternative export route for the transportation of Saudi oil and gas.

What is the Houthi relationship with Iran?

The Houthis are neither a direct conduit for Iranian interests in Yemen, nor a fully independent entity free of the Islamic Republic’s influence.

Analysts have said Iranian support helped the Houthis evolve from a group of poorly organized rebels to a powerful armed presence in the region, with an arsenal of cruise and ballistic missiles and long-range drones.

But the group has had to weigh its loyalty to Tehran alongside domestic calculations. It may have delayed engaging in full-scale confrontations in the current regional conflict because it could risk inviting renewed strikes on Houthi leadership and infrastructure — or even emboldening rival Yemeni factions.

U.S. Central Command, which oversees operations in the region, did not immediately respond to questions about the attack.

In a video, crowds can be seen fleeing as explosions ring out near the Iranian side of the crossing.

Video

CreditCredit...StringersHub, via Associated Press

The footage, which circulated online early Thursday morning, shows people carrying suitcases and rucksacks running away from a blaze. The attacks killed two people, according to Iranian officials.

Video

CreditCredit...StringersHub, via Associated Press

Additional footage of the aftermath, also verified by The Times, shows a damaged telecommunications tower inside a small compound within the border crossing facility.

The footage emerged shortly before U.S. Central Command said in a statement that it had completed its 12th consecutive night of strikes against Iranian military sites. The statement did not mention targeting of a border crossing facility.

In what appeared to be a retaliatory strike, the Abdali border crossing between Kuwait and Iraq was also hit on Thursday afternoon.

Gen. Saud Abdulaziz Al-Otaibi, a spokesman for Kuwait’s defense ministry, said in a statement that the crossing had come “under attack by hostile drones,” without specifying their origin, and that there had been no casualties. Since the war began in late February, Iran has launched missile and drone attacks at Kuwait as well as other nations in the Middle East, saying it is targeting U.S. military installations there.

The spokesman said in a second statement that the border crossing was also subjected to “repeated” attacks Thursday evening, but that no injuries were reported.

Videos verified by The Times showed dark clouds of smoke rising on the Kuwaiti side of the border crossing near a radio tower and billowing over several curved metal structures.

Video

CreditCredit...Social media, via Reuters

Another video verified by The Times shows multiple cars and trucks parked on the side of the road on the Iraqi side of the border, with people filming as clouds of smoke continue to emanate from the area.

Neither Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps nor U.S. Central Command has commented on the attack.

The Iraqi government has not commented on either attack.

The House action came after the United States concluded its 12th consecutive night of strikes in Iran, following the collapse of a cease-fire that many Republicans had hoped would yield a diplomatic breakthrough to wind down the war well before they must face voters in November’s midterm elections.

The measure passed on a vote of 214 to 208. The Republicans who joined Democrats in favor were Representatives Tom Barrett of Michigan, Warren Davidson of Ohio, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Thomas Massie of Kentucky. That was the same quartet that helped Democrats push through a similar war powers resolution last month.

“My position hasn’t changed,” Mr. Barrett, who is among the most politically vulnerable Republicans in the House, said in a statement after the vote. “Only Congress has the authority to authorize military action in Iran. I remain ready to work with anyone to eliminate hostile threats to our nation without getting us into another endless war.”

The resolution, sponsored by Representative Pramila Jayapal, Democrat of Washington, was among the final matters the House voted on before leaving Washington for a five-week summer recess. Many Democrats predicted that members of Congress would hear from voters during the break about how frustrated they are with the course of the war.

A Washington Post-Ipsos poll released last week found that only 29 percent of Americans support the war in Iran. A POLITICO poll found that Trump supporters who identified as “MAGA” voters said there were conditions to their continued support, with 37 percent saying they would only continue backing the conflict so long as prices for Americans did not rise. Global oil prices hit $100 a barrel on Thursday for the first time since May.

Representative Jason Crow, Democrat of Colorado, said that the waning public support would likely push more Republican lawmakers to speak out more forcefully against the Trump administration’s unilateral approach to the war.

“When we come back in September, I bet we have more people joining with us saying, ‘All right, let’s wrap this up,’ ” he said on Thursday.

The House vote underscored the growing divide between Republicans on Capitol Hill and the White House as the war in Iran drags on.

A growing group of Republican lawmakers has become more vocal about questioning the lack of congressional authorization or consultation, and also the administration’s failure to lay out a clear endgame. But Mr. Trump has shown no willingness to involve the legislative branch and little sign of winding down the campaign. Instead, he has escalated his bellicose language and asserted that he has unchecked power to continue the military operation.

Mr. Trump brushed aside Congress’s earlier rebukes last month, when the House and Senate both passed a similar measure, the first time since the conflict began in February that lawmakers voted to disapprove of it.

House Republican leaders are now pressing forward with a budget plan that would pay for the war, putting their members in the politically unappealing position of voting to finance an unpopular conflict that the Republican-led Congress has not authorized, and over which it has exercised little oversight.

In the face of Mr. Trump’s disregard for the congressional action, Representative Gregory W. Meeks of New York, the top Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, said that he had begun the process to file a lawsuit against the administration for ignoring the resolutions.

“We have a situation where we’ve passed, now twice, war powers resolutions,” Mr. Meeks said in an interview on Thursday. “The president should not be able to get around this.”

In the Senate on Thursday, a similar resolution stalled after only one Republican, Senator Susan Collins of Maine, backed it.

Senator Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican who previously voted to direct Mr. Trump to end hostilities or seek authorization to continue them, changed his stance. Senators Rand Paul of Kentucky and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, two other Republicans who had backed similar efforts, did not vote.

It was the 12th time Democrats had forced such a vote, and they vowed to continue doing so as they implored Republicans to stop deferring to Mr. Trump and join the effort to wind down the war.

“As the war escalates even further, as more American service members are killed, as more civilians are killed, as oil and gas prices and other prices go up, this is an opportunity for this Congress to finally take responsibility,” Senator Chris Van Hollen, the Maryland Democrat who sponsored the measure, said before the vote. “We know the president has no respect for the law, but we have an obligation to our constituents. We should not duck that responsibility.”

Senator John Fetterman, Democrat of Pennsylvania, was the only member of his party to oppose it, in line with his past votes on the issue.

Mr. Cassidy said he had switched his position after multiple briefings by administration officials, though he still had concerns about the conflict.

“Now, do I approve how the war is being carried out? Not necessarily,” he said on Thursday. But he said he was not comfortable calling for an immediate withdrawal.

Senator Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican who opposed Thursday’s measure as he has previous such efforts, said that he might change his stance should the conflict continue to drag on. But he noted that presidents of both parties have at various times dodged the statute requiring consultation with Congress on military engagements.

“My rationalization for not really applying the War Powers Act earlier is all the games that have been played,” Mr. Tillis said. Given Mr. Trump’s formal notification to Congress on July 10 that hostilities with Iran had resumed, he said the president should have until Sept. 10 — the end of a 60-day window laid out in the war powers law — to act without authorization from Congress. (The 1973 law actually forbids the president from ordering American forces into a conflict without congressional approval unless the United States is under attack, but it provides a 60-day clock to terminate such an operation if he has not secured authorization.)

“The clock is ticking,” Mr. Tillis said.

But close allies of the president noted that he had repeatedly ignored what Congress had to say on the matter.

“Do you think he cares?” Senator Tommy Tuberville, Republican of Alabama, said on Thursday with a chuckle. “No.”

The Houthi threat to prevent ships from traveling to and from Saudi Arabian ports on the Red Sea has complicated travel in an area that was serving as an alternative to the Strait of Hormuz, where Iran and the United States are jousting for control.

The Houthis, an Iran-backed group in Yemen, claimed on Wednesday that they had targeted two Saudi oil tankers with missiles and drones. If the Houthis manage to block Saudi Arabia from using the Red Sea, they would be cutting off about 4 percent of the world’s oil supply and leaving Saudi Arabia, one of the world’s biggest producers, with very little access to global markets.

“The conflict has entered a decidedly more dangerous phase,” analysts from RBC Capital Markets wrote on Wednesday. Even though oil prices have risen a lot in recent weeks, “we still see them as a lagging indicator of the extreme pressure building in the region,” they added, forecasting that a “full regional war” could send prices toward $150 a barrel.

Brent oil prices are now nearly 40 percent higher than on the eve of the war. (U.S. oil prices, at around $91 a barrel, are on a similar trajectory.) More expensive oil will push prices at the pump around the world even higher, unwelcome news for drivers already faced with stubbornly high gasoline and diesel prices.

The cost of those transportation fuels remained elevated even as oil prices eased in June, briefly falling below prewar levels. More oil was flowing through the Strait of Hormuz at that time, but fewer refineries were available to turn that crude into the fuels that power cars and airplanes.

That is partly because of the war with Iran, but also because Ukraine has inflicted significant damage on Russian refineries — so much so that Russia banned diesel exports in early July to preserve domestic supplies.

A gallon of regular gasoline in the United States cost 37 percent more on Thursday than it did prewar, at a national average of $4.09 per gallon, according to the AAA motor club. Diesel prices were 39 percent higher than they were when U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran started in February.

The refineries that remain open are reaping huge rewards. In the United States, profit margins on turning oil into gasoline and diesel are near multiyear highs, according to data from commodities research firm Argus Media.

The threats to shipping in the Red Sea, paired with continued fighting between the United States and Iran around the Persian Gulf, are stoking concern about the outlook for oil supply, Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency, said this week.

“A resolution to the ongoing conflict that includes a full and unconditional reopening of the Strait of Hormuz will be essential to avoid a further deterioration in global energy security,” Mr. Birol said.

Earning reports from tech giants Tesla and Alphabet in the second quarter fanned broader concerns in the market about runaway spending on artificial intelligence.

Alphabet said that it expects its spending to total between $195 billion and $205 billion in 2026, up around $15 billion from its forecast earlier this year. Its stock slid nearly 7 percent. Tesla’s profits of $1.1 billion fell short of investors’ estimates of $1.3 billion, sending its stock spiraling down around 14.5 percent.

Shares of other large tech companies like Intel, AMD and Amazon were also sharply lower on Thursday.

Investors also grappled Thursday with rising oil prices, as strikes on tankers in the Red Sea by the Iranian-backed Houthi militia group added to fears about the flow of oil out of the Middle East. That uncertainty pushed the global price of oil past $100 a barrel, the highest since May.

Shipping traffic has slowed to a trickle since the Houthi threat. Only 15 ships passed through the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday, according to Kpler, a maritime data firm. That was roughly in line with recent days, and well below prewar traffic levels of around 130 ships per day.

The conflict is widening at a vulnerable time for energy markets. Oil stockpiles are smaller than they were when U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran began at the end of February, and Ukrainian attacks have severely damaged Russian refineries, tightening supplies of transportation fuels like diesel.

Gas prices in the United States rose 3 cents on Thursday, to $4.09 a gallon, according to the AAA motor club. The national average price at the pump has risen 37 percent since the war began.

Gas prices usually trail crude oil increases or drops by a few days. Many of the world’s refineries are offline or producing less after sustaining damage in the Persian Gulf and Russia, straining fuel markets.

Another signal of market worry is the rising yield on the 10-year Treasury, which helps set borrowing rates for companies and consumers. On Thursday, the yield reached 4.7 percent, its highest level in a year.

As oil prices climb more steeply, the market is anticipating higher inflation, analysts at Deutsche Bank noted, pricing in “a more hawkish path for central banks.”

The European Central Bank held interest rates steady on Thursday, after raising them at its meeting in June. Investors’ attention is now turning to the Federal Reserve, which meets next week. Futures markets are implying a 36 percent chance of a rate increase when officials meet.

Jenny Gross, Shirin Hakim and Pranav Baskar contributed reporting.

The Houthis, a rebel group that controls a significant part of Yemen, announced the naval blockade on Monday. The move threatened to open a new front in the war in the Middle East and to further disrupt global energy supplies already reduced by the fighting between the United States and Iran in and near the Strait of Hormuz.

Mohammed al-Basha, a U.S.-based risk adviser focused on Yemen, said the tanker strikes on Wednesday demonstrated that the Houthis were “racing up” the “escalation ladder.” He said the attacks could prompt a military response by Saudi Arabia, an Iranian adversary that has relied on Red Sea routes in recent months to export millions of barrels of oil.

Both the Layla and the Encelia are Saudi-flagged tankers according to public ship-tracking data. While the Layla was last tracked five days ago in the Red Sea, the Encelia was located there Thursday morning, the tracking data showed.

The Houthis also claimed that in addition to attacking the two oil tankers, they forced around “10 ships to retreat and return.”

That claim could not be independently verified, but at least six vessels did reverse course in the Red Sea on Monday and Tuesday after the militia warned shipping companies to avoid Saudi ports, according to Kpler, a maritime data firm. It was not clear if those ships were included in the Houthis’ count.

While the Saudis and the Houthis have been in a fragile stalemate since a cease-fire in 2022, tensions erupted last week when the Houthis accused Saudi Arabia of striking Yemen’s main international airport in Sanaa, the Yemeni capital, in a dispute over an Iranian plane that tried to land there. The Houthis retaliated by attacking the Abha airport in southern Saudi Arabia, the first direct Houthi strike on Saudi soil since early 2022.

The Houthis have weaponized their ability to disrupt shipping in the Red Sea before.

During the war in Gaza, which began in late 2023, the Houthis attacked commercial shipping in the Red Sea with drones, missiles and hijacking, trying to exert pressure on Israel and its allies. By some estimates, a Houthi blockade could affect more than 3 percent of the global oil market.

Ismaeel Naar contributed reporting.

Later, Mr. Trump took one soldier’s grieving family to his political rally in Georgia.

The president did not say how he knew the fallen soldiers’ views, but he decided to speak for them at a perilous political moment. Americans, including Republicans, have grown increasingly critical of the war in Iran, and the killings of U.S. service members was a grim, high-profile reminder that the president had failed to end a war that he had promised would only amount to “a little excursion.”

The excursion has left at least 18 service members dead, a number that Mr. Trump has tried to both defend and diminish in recent days as the conflict grows bloodier.

In a social media post on Tuesday, he compared the number of troop deaths in the Iran war with death counts in other conflicts, including the Vietnam War and the single-day mission that ousted Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan president, last winter.

Mr. Trump has been proud to say that the Venezuela mission resulted in zero deaths, and he has repeatedly pointed out that conflicts in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq resulted in thousands of them. But when he traveled to Delaware on Wednesday, Mr. Trump was met with a stark reminder of the cost of each casualty.

Flanked by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other senior military officials, including Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mr. Trump approached the back ramp of the C-17 transport plane that had carried the soldiers home. He and the others bowed their heads for a moment.

Then the men walked away from the plane, assembling themselves into a line nearby and looking straight ahead as soldiers began to carry each American flag-draped case from the plane. Several White House officials stood behind Mr. Trump, including Karoline Leavitt, the press secretary, who put her hand on her heart. Also standing nearby was Natalie Harp, the aide who drafts many of the president’s vitriolic social media posts and prints out flattering news articles for Mr. Trump’s review.

A woman wailed as the fourth case was loaded into a waiting transfer van. At several points, Mr. Trump tapped his right hand against his right thigh. When it was all over, the president climbed into an armored car that took him to his waiting plane.

The president is adamant that Americans support the Iran war.

“A poll just came out: Americans don’t want high gasoline prices, but they’re not against the war — that just came out loud and clear,” Mr. Trump said earlier on Wednesday before he traveled to the transfer. He did not specify the poll he was talking about.

In reality, pollsters for months have been tracking growing frustration over the war, including within the Republican Party. According to a Washington Post-Ipsos poll released last week, only 29 percent of Americans support the conflict. That poll also showed that most Americans do not believe their economic outlook will improve.

As he defended the war and praised the soldiers who had been killed in action, Mr. Trump also told reporters that attending dignified transfers was a difficult thing for him.

“It’s one of the hardest things to do as a president,” Mr. Trump said, adding, “It has to be done.”

The families of the service members who were killed have not talked about their support for the war.

Instead, Sgt. Michael Emmanuel Swinton, 30, who was killed while disposing of an Iranian drone in Iraq, was described as a jokester, according to his mother.

Pvt. Isabella Gonzales, who was 19 years old when she was killed by an Iranian missile at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base last week in Jordan, was simply described by her uncle as a “soldier.”

First Lt. Tyler James Feehan, 25, was also killed in that attack. He was described as a mentor to others.

“He believed deeply in the power of military service, especially what it builds in a person: discipline, leadership, character,” his family said in a statement. “Everyone who knew him loved him.”

The family is trying to raise money for a scholarship in Lieutenant Feehan’s name.

Sgt. Angel S. Rampersad, 28, who is also believed to have been killed during that attack, was called a “gentle giant” by her family.

Mr. Trump has released several seething statements promising retribution against Iran for their killings.

“Every time Iran kills an American Soldier they will pay for that killing ⁠many times over. This directive has been passed on to Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, ​Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Daniel Caine,” he wrote on social media on Monday.

On Tuesday, U.S. Central Command said on social media that the U.S. military had begun striking targets for the 11th straight day, an effort meant to hinder the Iranian military’s threats against commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz.

As he prepared to leave Dover on Wednesday, Mr. Trump invited several members of Lieutenant Feehan’s family to travel with him aboard Air Force One. The president was on his way to a political rally in Georgia, and a White House official told reporters that he had decided to give them a lift to their home state.

By Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Trump had traded the difficulty of witnessing a dignified transfer for an environment where he felt more comfortable. As he took the stage at his rally in Georgia, Mr. Trump basked in applause and swayed to the music of Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA.”

Lieutenant Feehan’s mother, father and uncle were seated in the audience as the president recounted the day, including the family’s awed reaction — “‘Wow!’” the president recalled — when he offered them a ride on his plane.

“This was a person who was going all the way,” Mr. Trump told the grieving family from the stage. “He would have been a general very quickly.”

Flight tracker websites have identified Air Force C-17 medevac flights from Jordan to Germany in recent days.

The seriously wounded service members are among the roughly 100 American troops that the Defense Department recently said were injured by Iranian attacks since early July.

Most of those service members have returned to duty, the Pentagon said. About 50 of the injuries were suffered in recent attacks on bases in Jordan where U.S. forces are stationed, U.S. officials said.

The Defense Department did not disclose the latest casualties in Jordan and elsewhere in the Middle East until The New York Times reported on injuries from four attacks last week, the last of which, on Friday, killed three soldiers and wounded several others.

A total of 18 U.S. service members have died in the war since it started on Feb. 28, and about 550 have been wounded so far in the conflict. At least 1,700 Iranian civilians have been killed in the war, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency, a rights group focused on Iran.

In the days since a fragile truce collapsed this month, the Pentagon has provided little information about the American military strategy after nearly five months of war. The last major Pentagon briefing on the war was in early May.

In statements after airstrikes against Iranian military sites last week, U.S. Central Command said it was retaliating for Iran’s attacks against commercial ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz, never mentioning Iran’s strikes on bases in the region, including in Jordan.

Central Command is not required to release information about injured service members, especially when they quickly return to duty, a U.S. military official said.

Sean Parnell, the chief Pentagon spokesman, said that the military had not withheld or misrepresented U.S. casualties in the war. “Claims of concealment are fabrications meant to further distress the American people in the wake of three service members killed in action,” he said in a statement on Monday.

He later posted on social media that the “vast majority” of the nearly 100 casualties since July 7 involved “mild concussions,” and 96 percent of those service members have returned to duty.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a social media post over the weekend that the deaths of the troops in Jordan “only stiffens our resolve.”