Two of the US service members killed in Jordan have been identified
by Dave DeCamp | July 20, 2026 at 2:16 pm ET | Iran
The New York Times reported on Monday that the Pentagon didn’t disclose that US troops had been injured by Iranian attacks on Jordan in the week leading up to the missile strikes that killed at least two US soldiers and left one missing.
US officials told the Times that in the days before the deadly January 17 attack, Iranian strikes on US facilities in Jordan injured dozens of US service members and damaged multiple US military helicopters.
Throughout that same week, US Central Command released multiple statements on the US airstrikes against Iran and other military operations but made no mention of the injuries, following a pattern of the US hiding casualties throughout the war.
A day after the deadly attack in Jordan, another US soldier was killed in Iraq during what CENTCOM called “a controlled detonation of unexploded ordnance from a downed Iranian one-way attack drone,” bringing the total number of US troops killed in the war in recent days to at least four, a number that includes the soldier missing in Jordan as CENTCOM said it found remains it was working to identify.
The US military identified the other two US Army soldiers killed in Jordan, which included a 19-year-old woman, Pvt. Isabella Gonzales of Carrollton, Texas, who died on Friday. The other soldier, 1st Lt. Tyler James Feehan, 25, of Ewa Beach, Hawaii, died of his wounds on Saturday.
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell initially rejected the Times’ report as “baseless and malicious” but then acknowledged that nearly 100 US troops have been injured in the war since July 7, though he downplayed the injuries.
“While nearly 100 service members were deemed to have some degree of injury since July 7, 2026, 96% have returned duty. They are determined to get back in the fight,” Parnell wrote on X. “The vast majority of injuries experienced were minor concussions. Further updates will be posted on the Defense Casualty Analysis System.”
According to the Pentagon’s numbers, at least 18 US service members have been killed, and more than 500 have been wounded in the Iran war since President Trump launched it on February 28.
US and Israeli attacks on Iran in that time have killed around 3,500 Iranians, including more than 50 since the US renewed strikes several weeks ago. In April, Iranian officials said nearly half of those killed were civilians, including the 120 school children killed in the US bombing of an elementary school in Minab, southern Iran.
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