As the Iran War Escalates, Is the U.S. Hiding Its Toll?
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From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. 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 U.S. 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 U.S. military to disclose less and less about the conflict. It's Tuesday, July 21st.
Eric, welcome back. Always good to have you.
Thank you, Michael. Good to be here.
So we want to talk to you about what feels like a very sad new milestone in the collapse of the U.S.-Iran ceasefire in the past week or so, which is the death of multiple U.S. service members in an attack over the weekend. Can you just tell us exactly what happened there?
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 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.
Hmm. And Eric, what do we know about these service members who were killed in this attack in Jordan?
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, the Patriot anti-missile batteries and such.
What immediate events triggered the recent escalation in the Iran war?
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.
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.
That's right. I mean, obviously, the more than 13,000 strikes that the United States took in the first part of the war very badly damaged and 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 U.S. is having to restrike Iran. some of these targets in this kind of tit-for-tat exchange we've seen every day now for over a week.
Is it possible that Iran used the ceasefire to restock and essentially reorganize itself for these kinds of attacks?
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–3:30
2
What immediate events triggered the recent escalation in the Iran war?
3:30–11:18
3
How did the attack in Jordan unfold and who were the U.S. service members affected?
11:18–24:26
4
Is Iran's military capability still robust despite earlier U.S. strikes?
24:26–27:53