<\/p>\n
America\u2019s Iran War<\/span> casualties crept higher even as the U.S. was in the final stages of declaring a second ceasefire with Iran this weekend.\u00a0<\/p>\n The U.S. and Iran have agreed to a second ceasefire and the eventual reopening the Strait of Hormuz under a preliminary deal scheduled to take effect on Friday.\u00a0\u201cIran has taken a major step toward final victory,\u201d\u00a0Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker\u00a0of the Iranian Parliament,\u00a0said<\/a> on Monday, one of several Iranian leaders taking a victory lap after outlasting the Trump administration<\/a>.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s war has already killed thousands of Iranian civilians \u2014 including more than 150, most of them children \u2013 \u00a0in a\u00a0strike on an elementary school<\/a>. The official number of dead and wounded U.S. personnel stands at 426, an almost 11 percent increase since the first ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran was struck on April 8. This tally, however, is missing hundreds of casualties, including two soldiers wounded in action earlier this month.<\/p>\n For months, <\/a>The Intercept\u00a0has reported<\/a> that the Pentagon\u2019s official tally of dead and wounded military personnel from the Iran War is a gross undercount, stemming from what another U.S. government official called a \u201ccasualty cover-up<\/a>.\u201d The Defense Casualty Analysis System, or DCAS, which tracks \u201cdeceased, wounded, ill or injured<\/a>\u201d service members for\u00a0Congress and the president, is missing hundreds of known casualties. The true number exceeds 625.<\/p>\n When the first ceasefire was struck between the Trump administration and Iran, the tally of U.S. casualties was 385. Despite a pause in hostilities, the number slowly rose to 428, according to Pentagon statistics.<\/p>\n On April 21, however, the number of\u00a0wounded-in-action troops declined by 15<\/a>\u00a0without public comment from the War Department, dropping the casualty total to 413. Despite repeated questions over almost two months, the Pentagon has not explained the disparity in its casualty count. A defense official told The Intercept that it was impossible to tell whether Pentagon casualty analysts were \u201cgrossly incompetent\u201d or had been ordered to manipulate the figures.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n Since the 15 wounded vanished in April, the DCAS casualty count has steadily crept upward to top out at 413, where it stood on Tuesday morning.\u00a0This includes one sailor wounded in action this month. Central Command did not reply to a request for further information about the injury.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The official figures appear to be missing two soldiers who were recently wounded in action. CENTCOM spokesperson Capt. Tim Hawkins told NBC News<\/a> last week that two crew members from a U.S. Army AH-64 Apache helicopter downed by an Iranian drone on June 8 were receiving medical care. And a CENTCOM social media post<\/a> said they were in \u201cstable condition.\u201d But DCAS lists no Army personnel wounded in action this month.<\/p>\n The official tally of war dead also appears to be an undercount. For weeks, DCAS listed 13 hostile and non-hostile U.S. deaths during the war. DCAS briefly raised the total to 14 last month before dropping it back to 13, without any explanation on the fluctuation.<\/p>\n The Pentagon list of the names of the dead is still missing Maj. Sorffly Davius, a signals and communication officer with the New York Army National Guard who was assigned to the headquarters of the 42nd Infantry Division and reportedly died of sudden illness while on duty in Camp Buehring, Kuwait, on March 6. Davius\u2019s death was widely acknowledged even as it was excluded from the official count: Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., spoke about him during a\u00a0memorial service<\/a>\u00a0that month, and Gen. Dan Caine, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,\u00a0recognized Davius\u00a0<\/a>while \u201chonoring our fallen.\u201d<\/p>\n While DCAS provides a running tally of \u201cnon-hostile\u201d deaths \u2014 meaning those who died from accidents or by illness \u2014 it doesn\u2019t include \u201cnon-hostile\u201d injuries. The DCAS figures show that 65 Navy personnel have been wounded in action. Missing, however, are the more than\u00a0200 sailors<\/a>\u00a0treated for smoke inhalation or lacerations due to a March 12 fire that raged aboard the\u00a0USS\u00a0Gerald R. Ford<\/a>.\u00a0The aircraft carrier had been conducting round-the-clock flight operations to, in Caine\u2019s words, \u201cproject combat power<\/a>\u201d in the Middle East. The ship\u00a0returned<\/a>\u00a0to its home port in Norfolk, Virginia, last month after 326 days at sea, the longest deployment of any U.S. aircraft carrier since the Vietnam War.<\/p>\n The casualty numbers also don\u2019t include a sailor who suffered a\u00a0non-combat-related injury<\/a>\u00a0aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln as it was involved in \u201cstrike missions in support of Operation Epic Fury\u201d on March 25.<\/p>\n