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Deaths, strikes, and framing
President Donald Trump called the deaths of two U.S. service members in Jordan “a very sad thing” in a phone call with NewsNation, saying the troops died “in service of our country” while U.S. Central Command announced they were killed defending against Iranian missile and drone attacks.
NewsNation reported that U.S. Central Command said a third service member remains missing and that four others injured in the attack have been treated and released from hospitals in Jordan, while CENTCOM also said it concluded more than five hours of renewed airstrikes to “swiftly punish Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps forces who launched attacks against American service members in Jordan last night.”
The Guardian said Democrats urged Trump to halt the Iran war after the deaths of three U.S. troops killed in Iranian strikes, as the Pentagon released the names of First Lieutenant Tyler James Feehan, 25, of Ewa Beach, Hawaii, and Private Isabella Gonzales, 19, of Carrollton, Texas.
The Guardian added that a third member was killed in northern Iraq in what US Central Command called a “controlled detonation” of unexploded ordnance, and it said the remains of a possible fourth dead service member were found over the weekend in Jordan.
CNN said the Iran war has seen the first U.S. troop deaths since March and that Trump “really struggles to speak empathetically about this issue,” as his comments to the media over the weekend reinforced that he was “preoccupied with inserting the troops’ deaths into a political calculation.”
Democrats and allies react
Democrats seized on the deaths to urge Trump to reverse his resumption of the war with Iran, with Chris Murphy, a Democratic senator for Connecticut, accusing Trump of having “frighteningly lost control of this war.”
The Guardian also quoted Mark Warner, the vice-chair of the Senate intelligence committee and a Democrat from Virginia, saying there were “hundreds of seriously wounded” U.S. personnel and calling it “remarkable” that casualty figures had not been higher.
On the other side, Fox News host and Marine combat veteran Joey Jones criticized Trump’s Iran war strategy after two American service members were killed in an Iranian airstrike in Jordan on Friday, complaining, “Simply dropping bombs isn’t working,” and calling the fallen fighters “heroes” and “gladiators.”
Jones told The Big Weekend Show that “reality hits us in the face” when “two Americans are killed in an airstrike,” and he said “Most Americans say: ‘How is that even possible?’”
The Daily Beast reported that Tucker Carlson told Mishal Husain that it was “a factually verifiable statement that Israel pushed us into this [war], and Trump allowed them to do that,” and he added, “The United States is unwilling to, or maybe unable, who knows, to restrain Israel.”
Casualty counts and next moves
NewsNation said U.S. Central Command announced the identities of those killed will not be revealed until next of kin has been notified, and it reported that since the war began, 16 U.S. service members have now been killed and over 430 wounded.
The Guardian said the latest casualties brought the number of U.S. service members killed since the start of the war on 28 February to at least 17, and it said more than 1,700 Iranian civilians are estimated to have been killed.
The Guardian reported that the House and Senate have both passed war powers resolutions requiring the president to ask for congressional approval after 60 days of hostilities, while the White House contended that there has yet to be 60 days of continuous fighting because the clock stopped after an initial ceasefire in April.
In a separate report, عربي21 said the Pentagon put the U.S. military death toll at 17 service members since the outbreak of the current confrontation and said Pentagon spokesperson Sean Barniel described about 100 members of U.S. forces as wounded since the United States resumed its military operations against Iran in early July.
CNN said Trump claimed in the Oval Office that “every single one of the people, their loved ones, said, ‘Please, sir, please, finish the job,’ Every one of them,” while it noted that at least one father, Charles Simmons, told NBC News “that was not something we talked about.”
