In Forty-Eight Hours the Commerce Secretary Says "There Haven't Been American Deaths" in Iran, the Vice President Says "I Wouldn't Call It a War," and an Airman's Widow Is Told Her Combat Benefits Depend on Congress Declaring One
On September 2, 2026, in a CNBC interview from the G20 finance meeting, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said of the six-month-old Iran campaign that "there haven't been American deaths, it's really just an economic choke out." The Defense Department's own casualty database records 18 U.S. service members killed and more than 400 wounded in action since the war began on February 28. Lutnick apologized the next morning on X, saying he had been thinking of the January operation that captured Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. President Trump offered the same explanation on Truth Social. Hours later, at a White House briefing on September 3, Vice President JD Vance was asked whether the conflict would be over before the midterms and answered, "I wouldn't call it a war. Right now, there is no active shooting" — in a briefing where he had described Iran shooting at commercial shipping repeatedly, before and after. The semantics are not academic. Libby Klinner, whose husband Air Force Maj. John "Alex" Klinner was killed March 12 in a KC-135 crash during refueling operations, wrote that a casualty assistance officer told her combat-related entitlements — Hostile Fire Pay, Imminent Danger Pay, the Combat Zone Tax Exclusion — were unavailable because Congress had not declared war. The Air Force opened a review and later said classification confusion, not denial, was the cause; a Defense Department review found the family was receiving all eligible benefits. Vance told reporters the administration would "work that on the back end." Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-AZ) called Vance's framing "profoundly disrespectful" to the families of the 18 dead. Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) had already introduced legislation in August to stop the Pentagon from resetting the war's casualty count by moving deaths after July 7 onto a separate page labeled "Overseas Operations."
“22 of our service members have been killed in Trump's illegal war. Not 18 like we were told. The Pentagon hid four more heroes' deaths from us for months. Congress cannot let them get away with this.”