Honest, paywall-free news is rare. Please support our boldly independent journalism with a donation of any size.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick was forced to apologize after falsely saying that zero U.S. servicemembers have died in the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, in the latest instance of the Trump administration demonstrating a careless attitude toward the 18 soldiers killed in the war.

In an interview with CNBC on Wednesday, Lutnick bragged that no troops have died because of how deftly the U.S. has been fighting in Iran.

“I think the way the president is playing Iran, there haven’t been American deaths. It’s really just an economic chokeout which the administration is now executing more broadly,” said Lutnick, calling in from the G20 AI ministerial held in North Carolina this week.

Eighteen U.S. troops have been killed in the war and 756 have been wounded, according to the Pentagon — which has already faced scrutiny for obfuscating the U.S.’s casualties in relation to the war. The U.S. and Israel have killed roughly 3,500 Iranians since February, including thousands of civilians like those killed by a U.S. bombing of a wedding this week.

“While speaking yesterday at the G20 innovation summit about AI, I answered a question about the military actions in Iran, I misspoke,” Lutnick wrote in an apology posted on X. “18 members of our military have died, and to those families my heart breaks and I am so very sorry for their loss.”

People in Southern Iran Struggle to Repair After US Attacks on Infrastructure

Lutnick claims he was thinking of the........

© Truthout