Hegseth cut the program that counted civilian deaths. The Pentagon is slow-walking its own casualty list too.

Two counts of what the war with Iran has cost. One office was dismantled in 2025, and the other number arrives in installments.

Aug 26, 2026 · Geopolitics

There are two counts of what the war with Iran has cost. One is of the civilians killed in American and Israeli strikes, and the office that kept it was taken apart in 2025.

The program was called Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response. Until 2022 there was no standard framework for this work at all. That year the Pentagon adopted one and staffed it with about two hundred people across the department, to prevent civilian deaths in American strikes and to investigate the ones that happened anyway. It ran for three years.

In early 2025, according to ProPublica, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth put three options to the officers who order the strikes. Cut most of the program and keep a small office in Washington, cut it further, or scrap it altogether. Nine commanders picked the smallest cut. Two commands refused all three options outright. ProPublica is the only outlet that has reported that poll.

His own memo put a number on what U.S. Central Command needed to keep the work running. Sixteen people. It was left with one.

The same memo warned what the cut would mean, which was American strikes hitting more of the wrong targets. He made the cut. The Civilian Protection Center of Excellence went with it, so did the harm mitigation teams at the regional commands, and the military's top judge advocates were fired. Addressing generals and admirals at Quantico, Hegseth said there would be no more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement.

What that bought is on the record in two places. In Yemen in 2025, two of the deadliest American strikes ever acknowledged killed 153 civilians and wounded 243 more, according to Airwars and the Pentagon's own annual casualty report.

On the first day of the war with Iran, a strike hit a primary school in Minab, on the southern coast near the Strait of Hormuz. ProPublica reports that more than a hundred children were killed, and that the strike was built on intelligence later found to be out of date. Across the campaign, ProPublica puts the civilian toll in Iran at more than 1,200, nearly 200 of them children.

That is one of the two counts. Here is the other. The Defense Casualty Analysis System is the Pentagon's official tally of American military casualties. On 25 August it stood at 776 wounded or killed since the war began on 28 February. Eighteen dead. Seven hundred and fifty-eight wounded. Sixty of those were added in a single week.

A person inside the government told The Intercept why that number moves the way it does. They wanted the heat on them to slow down after the really devastating attacks, the official said, describing the staggered releases as an accounting trick. That is one anonymous official, quoted by one outlet.

There are deaths the tally has been slow to carry. Maj. Sorffly Davius, a signals officer with the 42nd Infantry Division, died on 6 March at Camp Buehring in Kuwait and was missing from the official tracker for weeks. More than two hundred sailors were treated for smoke inhalation and lacerations after a fire aboard the USS Gerald R. Ford on 12 March. Neither shows up in the number the Pentagon publishes.

Three hundred and forty-five of the 776 have come since the second ceasefire collapsed on 7 July.

Some of it has been forced back. A Pentagon watchdog found the cuts might violate federal law. Eleven senators demanded answers in a letter in April. The department has since proposed reviving the program at about seventy staff, against the two hundred it had.

Public support has not been above 40 percent since the war began. A Reuters/Ipsos poll of 1,246 adults, reported at the end of July, put it at one in three, and 69 percent said the goals of American involvement had never been clearly explained.

Support stood at one in three last month. The counting is not finished.

By the numbers

about 200 — people staffed the civilian harm program across the Pentagon before the cuts^[1]
16 to 1 — the CENTCOM civilian harm staff Hegseth's own memo said was needed, against what it was left with^[2]
153 — civilians killed, and 243 wounded, in two of the deadliest acknowledged U.S. strikes in Yemen in 2025^[3]
more than 1,200 — civilians killed in U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran, including nearly 200 children^[4]
776 — U.S. service members wounded or killed since the war began on 28 February 2026^[5]
345 — of those casualties have come since the second ceasefire collapsed on 7 July^[6]
about 70 — staff the Pentagon has proposed reviving the program with, against the 200 it had^[7]
one in three — Americans support the war on Iran, with 69 percent saying its goals were never clearly explained^[8]

The reporting

This story is built on reporting by ProPublica. Read the original →

Sources

Image credits

Hero: source (Public domain (DVIDS)) — U.S. Navy / Alexander Kubitza
In text: source (CC BY 4.0) — Morteza Salehi

We do our best to source photographs that accurately reflect each story, but we are a small team. Some images are illustrative rather than photographs of the specific event described. Every source is listed above.

Citations

PreviousA fake police camera was destroyed. Prosecutors charged him with three felonies.NextThe UAE says it is hacked 800,000 times a day, so it built its own AI to fight back