As the Iran War Escalates, Is the U.S. Hiding Its Toll?

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Michael Barbaro

From the New York Times, I'm Michael Balbaro. This is the Daily. On Monday, the war in Iran escalated in dangerous new ways, drawing in Kuwait, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia as the Trump administration reeled from the Iranian killing of US Service members in Jordan. Today, my colleague, Pentagon reporter Eric Schmidt talks us through the latest attacks and how they've coincided with the decision by the US Military to disclose less and less about the conflict. It's Tuesday, july 21st.

Eric, welcome back. Always good to have you.

Eric Schmidt

Thank you, Michael. Good to be here.

Michael Barbaro

So we wanna talk to you about what feels like a very sad new milestone in the collapse of the US Iran ceasefire in the past week or so, which is the death of multiple US Service members in an attack over the weekend. Can you just tell us exactly what happened there?

Eric Schmidt

Yeah. So the attack really culminates more than a week of exchanges, hostile exchanges between Iran and the United States as the ceasefire really falls apart. And on Friday, sadly, a barrage of Iranian missiles and drones. Slipped through the air defenses at a major air base in Jordan where U.S. forces are stationed. And at least two, there may have been a third U.S. army soldier were killed. There were several others who were badly injured, who were evacuated to Jordanian hospitals, and several others wounded who were able to return to duty soon enough. But, but this, Michael, was significant because these two and possibly three deaths in Jordan, along with the death of another army soldier in Iraq that happened the following day when they were detonating an Iranian drone, brings the total number of Americans killed in the war to 17.

Michael Barbaro

And Eric, what do we know about

these service members who were killed in this attack in Jordan?

Eric Schmidt

So the army soldiers who were killed in this attack were members of an air defense unit that had been positioned in Jordan to help protect the base. And it's led some U.S. officials to speculate that the Iranians, in targeting this base were also trying to specifically target the defenders of the base people, the Patriot anti missile batteries and such. We don't have proof of that. Yet. But that is one suggestion that investigators are looking at, that the Iranians, as they try and figure out ways to evade American air defenses, are actually also trying to knock out the very soldiers who man those defenses.

Michael Barbaro

Well, I'm glad you're raising the question of Iran's military sophistication in this moment, because what I think struck many of us about this attack, beyond the obvious tragedy of these soldiers dying, is that so long after President Trump claimed that Iran's military had been destroyed. That's the word he used, destroyed, by American military forces, it's becoming clear that Iran's military capabilities remain robust and lethal.

Eric Schmidt

That's right. I mean, Obviously, more than 13,000 strikes that the United States took in the first part of the war, very badly damaged and even decimated some parts of the Iranian military, the Air Force and the Navy, for instance. But the Iranians have always retained large numbers of attack drones, large numbers of the boats that lay mines, and large numbers of these missiles that they're now firing at the United States. They were literally able to dig out from some of the bomb sites, the missile launchers, the missiles themselves, some of which they're now launching back at the United States. And so the US Is having to restrike some of these targets in this kind of tit for tat exchange we've seen every day now for over a week.

Michael Barbaro

Is it possible that Iran used the ceasefire to restock and essentially reorganize itself for these kinds of attacks?

Eric Schmidt

It's not only possible, it's almost certain. American officials have privately and even grudgingly publicly acknowledged the Iranians have been able to use this time, the last several months, to kind of dig out some of their sites that were buried, rebuild some of their missile and drone capability in particular, because those are really the two threats that can both close the Strait of Hormuz as well as threaten American troops and others that are around the region. What this has underscored is just the ability of Iran to withstand the might of the United States and Israeli militaries and still survive, and survive with a kick. You know, even in a degraded state, Iranians still are quite a formidable force for this American military in the Middle East.

Michael Barbaro

Right.

And they do not resemble a regime that President Trump has described as desperate to make a deal. At this moment, quite the opposite, Eric, as Iran has demonstrated this muscularity over the past two weeks, you have been reporting on the absence of a certain level of transparency on the part of the US Military to disclose the extent of Iran's attacks that's right.

Eric Schmidt

Iran has been able to successfully attack several bases in the Middle east, including in Jordan. And in fact, my colleagues and I learned that before this deadly attack on Friday, there were three previous attacks on the same basis in Jordan over the previous three or four days. And that American troops had been wounded, had been injured in these troops, had been able to go back to duty. But what it showed was that the Iranians were zeroing in on these bases. And the Pentagon didn't want to disclose that? No.

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Why?

Eric Schmidt

Military commander said, why should we tell the Iranians that they're getting closer and closer to their ultimate target, hitting some barracks or hitting another major target inside of Jordan or any other country where we have bases? But this lack of transparency by the Pentagon is also important because it reveals this tension between what the military calls operational security, that is, keeping key details of a battle or a wartime situation away from the enemy, but at the same time sharing important information with the American public about how this war is going. And it's not going really well right now for the American military. And so they would argue that why should we put out this bad information in a way that would tell the Iranians, you know, you're having some success, well, keep going, or, you know, zero in on that target or this target. And so the reaction from the Pentagon is to clamp down on that kind of information until they're forced to release it as they were anytime. Of course, there's an American fatality in a combat zone that forced them to acknowledge not only the two tragic deaths, but the fact that there were a whole bunch of other people injured in that attack. And then my colleagues and I learned that there had been these other service members wounded in previous attacks.

Michael Barbaro

Well, Eric, how does the level of information we're getting from the Pentagon now, or I guess the lack of information, how does that compare to what the Pentagon was disclosing at the start of the war and over these past many months?

Eric Schmidt

Well, Michael, the level of information released by this Pentagon has never been great compared to previous Pentagons. But early in this war, the Pentagon did, from time to time, put out announcements, not only of the few instances where, tragically there had been Americans killed, but also kind of a running tally of the number of service members who had been injured. And we also had an opportunity in that early phase of the combat to ask Secretary Pete Hegseth and General Dan Kaine questions. Periodically, they will hold news conferences. These briefings weren't terribly helpful, but at least they made themselves available for questioning. There has not Been a Pentagon news conference since early May.

Michael Barbaro

So this change in the Pentagon's transparency, it seems to coincide, as you're hinting at, with the ceasefire. And I wonder if the ceasefire has become a cover, a rationale for the administration to tell us less and less about this war when, as we all, I think, understand, the ceasefire has been shredded and is in name only.

Eric Schmidt

I think that's a really important point. Remember, the President tried to, in certain times warn the American public that in a major war, as the US Was certainly in at the beginning, there would be casualties. That would be tragic, but that's a part of war. But when we shift to this ceasefire phase, I think what he's trying to tell the American public is the hostile action is over. We're wrapping this up. We're going to try and work through these negotiations and the longer term problems, yes, there may be periodic exchanges in the Strait of Hormuz, but that the period of high risk for American forces is largely over. And now for there to be not only the two and possibly three in Jordan, but another soldier killed in Iraq, suddenly that's jolting to the American public and say, wait a minute, we're in a ceasefire. Why are American troops being killed again?

Michael Barbaro

Right.

Eric Schmidt

That's very hard, I think, for this president and this administration to deal with.

Michael Barbaro

Right.

If the administration returned to regular briefings and to regular disclosures about injuries, for instance, it would be an acknowledgement that we're basically back in a full scale war. And in a moment like this past weekend, that the US Is not able

to protect its forces.

Eric Schmidt

That's right. And not only able to protect its forces, but it reminds people, what did the United States go to war in the first place for? What have we gotten out of this war so far? As this war has become more unpopular in Congress, votes are coming up on a regular basis to end the war. And you have public opinion polls show the war more and more unpopular as the days go by. And of course, the midterm elections are looming ever closer in November. This is a real problem for the President and his party. But it's at this moment that the public, the Congress, want this war to be over. That all signs point just to the opposite. All indications are that this war could be escalating in a very dangerous way very shortly.

Michael Barbaro

We'll be right back.

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Eric Schmidt

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Michael Barbaro

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Eric Schmidt

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Michael Barbaro

Eric, where exactly are we in the escalation of this conflict since the ceasefire fell apart? It absolutely seems to be the case that neither side is operating as if a ceasefire was ever reached. And as you said, that's put us in a pretty dangerous new phase of the conflict.

Eric Schmidt

Well, we are, if you just look kind of a list of the things that have changed, it's starting to look a lot like the way the war was being fought in the early days. Just kind of tick some of these off. First of all, the number of countries has grown sharply. It's gone from being just a tit for tat between the United States and Iran to drawing in most countries in the region. The second point is the scale of the targets. The US had gone from fairly focused on specific sites in and around the Strait of Hormuz that were threatening shipping there, and now the targets are broadly across the entire country, and the numbers are up quite dramatically. Then third, the United States had quietly started to send some of its forces home. Some of the aircraft that were used in the initial campaign, the fighters and strike aircraft, had been quietly sent back. Now that's being reversed, and some of those attack planes are rushing back in anticipation of possible escalating attacks by the United States.

Michael Barbaro

Well, let's take each of these one by one, and I Want to start with the list of countries, the growing list of countries becoming involved or I guess in some sense re involved in this conflict.

Eric Schmidt

Right. That's countries like Bahrain, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and of course, Jordan, as we've been talking about here. The Iranians discovered early on that not only attacking American bases, but attacking civilian infrastructure, energy sites in a lot of these other countries was a way of inflicting pain that was much more broadly felt.

Michael Barbaro

Right. Iran's strategy there seemed to be create as much pain for America's allies in the Middle east as possible so that those allies would pressure the US to end its war against Iran. Or if that failed, it would perhaps make these countries, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, rethink their decision to host the US Military within their borders.

Eric Schmidt

That's right. They're resuming that strategy of inflicting pain on their neighbors. But they're also doing something else that's important. They're threatening to activate one of their key proxies who up till now has kind of stayed on the sidelines of this five month old war, and that's the Houthis in Yemen. And the Houthis, longtime foes of Saudi Arabia, of course. And Saudi Arabia jumps in and strikes. The Houthis apparently, you know, worried about this threat. And the Houthis in response have now said just in the last few days, that they will close the Red Sea to Saudi traffic.

Michael Barbaro

And what's the significance of that?

Eric Schmidt

It's significant because not only will the Strait of Hormuz now be in conflict, but a second important regional waterway, the Red Sea, is now in play in this conflict.

Michael Barbaro

Right. Which, given how important Saudi Arabia is in the global oil industry, will probably mean that it will increase oil prices if the Houthi blockade is successful. And what strikes me is that we're now seeing the mere threat of the war spreading. In this case, Iran saying we're going to activate the Houthis, leading to actual consequences. Saudi Arabia, it seems, launches a preemptive attack to stop the Houthis. That's what an escalatory cycle starts to look like.

Eric Schmidt

That's right. And that's one of the great fears, of course, that this thing, which had been somewhat tamped down during the ceasefire period, is now going to become roaring back, not just in the immediate areas around the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz, but now a second area, a second front, if you will, that's emerging. That hadn't been a real issue in this conflict up till now.

Michael Barbaro

So let's turn to the second item you mentioned, Eric, as we try to understand the escalation of this conflict, which is what you said was a broader set of targets. So what are those targets?

Eric Schmidt

Yeah, it's a broader set of targets for both sides. The United States is now not only going after drone storage sites and missile silos and things like that, but they're also going after civilian infrastructure that the military says serves both military and civilian purposes. These are bridges, in particular, railway bridges and other bridges that enable the Iranians to send forces and equipment from other parts of the country to the region that's affected down near the Strait of Hormuz. The military's argument, the Pentagon's argument, is that if they knock out these bridges and cut off access to the coastal areas where the fighting is most intense, that will put more pressure on the Iranian regime. Well, the Iranians have basically said, okay, you want to play that game, we'll up our ante, too. And they're striking a new set of targets, new in recent weeks. And they include energy sites in these countries and desalination plants, which are so important to depend on desalination to provide fresh drinking water. So you have both sides escalating not only in terms of the number of countries or the parts of the countries that are being hit, but but the kinds of targets that can inflict pain on both sides.

Michael Barbaro

Of course, what's notable about all the targets you just mentioned, whether it's bridges, energy plants, desalination plants, is that they have traditionally sat in a category of targets that were seen as off limits in traditional warfare, because they are, especially in the case of a desalination plant, such crucial pieces of civilian infrastructure. So now we're not just talking about escalation of war, but escalation of what all sides of this conflict see as a tolerable human toll.

Eric Schmidt

That's right. And in some cases on the US Side, striking these targets when President Trump has threatened to do so, has raised concerns that this would be in violation of human rights laws to go after purely civilian targets. Now, the military quickly argues that they have taken purely civilian targets off the table, and they're hitting only targets that serve some kind of dual purpose, where there's a military component to this. But the military is leaning into this, again to put as much pressure on the Iranian government as it can right now.

Michael Barbaro

Okay, so I think that leads us to the final way in which you said this war is escalating, which is the US Buildup in the region. What do we know about that and how big a buildup Is it?

Eric Schmidt

Yeah. So the United States has kept about 15,000 troops in the immediate area to enforce the US naval blockade, which has been put back into effect by President Trump. But there's as many as 50,000 troops overall, both in the region and extending into Europe, who are supporting this campaign. The United States, in recent weeks, as the ceasefire kind of settled in tenuously as it was, started quietly sending some of its forces home, some of the fighter jets and other kind of planes that had been there for many weeks, if not months. But what we've seen just in the last few days is we seem to be on the brink of a new escalation. The United States is rushing new warplanes from Europe, F16s and F35s, in particular from England and from Germany back to the Middle east in anticipation that they may be needed in an even broader set of strikes if President Trump so orders.

Michael Barbaro

Eric, I understand that the number of US Forces in the region has more or less remained the same, but our colleagues have reported in the Times that inside Iran, some increasingly worry that the post ceasefire back and forth could eventually pave the way for some kind of ground operation. Is any kind of ground operation being discussed in this moment based on your reporting?

Eric Schmidt

Well, other than the president himself discussing it, no, not really. The president keeps talking about the possibility of ground options, perhaps seizing Kharg Island, a key oil hub in the northern Persian Gulf, or some of the small islands in the Strait of Hormuz that would allow the American military to suppress Iranian fire. But military commanders tell me that even though they're ready to carry out those orders if the president directs them, there's really no appetite on Capitol Hill or in the American public in general for putting boots on the ground, even in a limited ground operation like the president's been talking about.

Michael Barbaro

So where does all of this leave any possible negotiations or diplomacy? It does not seem like active diplomacy is going on at the moment.

Eric Schmidt

Well, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, just before he left on a trip to Asia, said that diplomacy is still an option that the United States would want to pursue. It's kind of hard to see that happening right now, though, given where the situation is. We have heard that other countries, such as Qatar and Pakistan, are trying to mediate a truce, if you will, to go back to the ceasefire that was put in place. Right now it's looking pretty hard for both sides to climb down from these most recent attacks on each other.

Michael Barbaro

So, Eric, just to end, I want

to bring everything we're talking about here together. I mean, Essentially, what you have explained here is that just as the war is escalating in ways that feel very unpredictable and very dangerous, we're getting less and less information from the Trump administration about the state of the conflict. And so what in your mind is the potential consequence of that combination?

Eric Schmidt

Well, look, the risk is that the true dimensions of the war are being kept from the American public. Military officials will continue to argue to me and my colleagues the, that they need operational security, that they can't share every last detail, particularly those that the Iranians could use to their benefit. But there's plenty of information they can share. And Michael, as we're sitting here recording this episode, the Pentagon's chief spokesman, Sean Parnell, disclosed that since July 7, some 100American service members have been injured in the war.

Michael Barbaro

That's a lot.

Eric Schmidt

That's a lot. Now most of them, he said, have returned to duty. And that's progress that we get this information. But it didn't come until after the New York Times reported on these three undisclosed attacks on Americans based in Jordan that happened over the past week or so. I mean, you hope that this would be standard practice and it has been for Pentagons in the past to kind of present this information, but it's not anymore. This war is now heating up in a major way and this is exactly the moment when we need greater transparency from the Pentagon, not less.

Michael Barbaro

Well, Eric, thank you very much.

We appreciate it.

Eric Schmidt

Thank you, Michael.

Michael Barbaro

On Monday afternoon, the White House said that the bodies of the two American service members killed in Jordan would be flown to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware and received by President Trump during a ceremony later this week. In a social media post, Trump promised revenge for the killings, writing, quote, every time Iran kills an American soldier, they will pay for that killing many times over. We'll be right back.

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Michael Barbaro

here's what else you need to know today. On Monday, President Trump reignited his trade war with Canada, signing orders to impose a 50% tariff on a wide range of Canadian products, including wine, hockey sticks and cement. The White House said that the tariffs were punishment for Canada's discriminatory treatment of American products, including cars and alcohol. And a federal judge has temporarily stopped Paramount from completing its $111 billion purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery as the judge considers a lawsuit that argues that the deal violates antitrust law. That lawsuit, filed by 12 Democratic states, argues that the merger would harm movie theaters, TV providers and audiences, a claim that Paramount disputes. Finally, the New York Times is seeking to quash a second set of subpoenas from the Trump administration that seek to unmask the confidential sources who provided information about the the security of the president's new Air Force One. While the first set of subpoenas sought to compel Times reporters to testify before a grand jury, the second set sought third party phone records for several Times reporters and their relatives, including one reporter's mother. Today's episode was produced by Jessica Ch Chung and Lexi Diao. It was edited by Annie Minoff and Rachel Quester and contains music by Dan Powell. Our theme music is by Wonderly. This episode was engineered by Chris Wood. That's it for the Daily I'm Michael Balboro. See you tomorrow.

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