Joseph Gedeon
The Guardian / September 3, 2026
President said Howard Lutnick had Venezuela operation on his mind when he was discussing Iran war on CNBC.
Washington – Donald Trump has claimed his commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, erroneously stated that no Americans had been killed in the war with Iran because he was thinking about a previous US operation, in Venezuela.
The claim, at odds with the Pentagon’s count of 18 US service members dead in the US-Israel war on Iran, sparked a swift backlash as Trump struggles to end the conflict after six months.
In a post on his Truth Social platform on Thursday, the US president wrote: “Sec. Lutnick had Venezuela on his mind when he said nobody was killed. 18 people were killed in Iran!”
The rebuke came a day after Lutnick appeared on CNBC’s Squawk Box and framed the Trump administration’s approach to Iran as primarily economic. Describing the strategy as an “economic choke-out”, he erroneously told the network there had not been American deaths in the conflict, adding that he was optimistic bond markets would respond well to the approach.
Lutnick this morning acknowledged the mistake, posting on X that he had misspoken and also claiming he had been thinking of the US operation in Venezuela, where US forces captured Nicolás Maduro in January with minimal US casualties. The Pentagon said seven US troops were injured and none were killed in that operation, while Venezuelan officials put their overall death toll at 47, and Cuba said 32 of its military and police personnel were killed.
Trump’s post landed as Iranian authorities detailed heavy casualties from the latest US strikes. Iran’s health ministry said Tuesday night’s strikes killed 18 people and wounded 108, while the country’s Red Crescent identified that four people were killed and 67 wounded when a US strike hit a wedding ceremony near the coast of the strait of Hormuz, which also killed a child. Reuters said it was able to verify the location of the damaged building using satellite imagery.
A US Central Command (CENTCOM) spokesperson, Capt Tim Hawkins, said the US military does not target civilians and that the reports, which originated with Iranian state media, were being reviewed.
The strikes were part of a broader operation that Central Command (CENTCOM) said hit Iranian air defense systems, radar installations, maritime assets, mine-laying equipment and communications sites near the strait of Hormuz, a strategic waterway through which a large share of the world’s oil passes.
The Pentagon’s capacity to independently verify such claims has been sharply reduced. Its Civilian Protection Center of Excellence has been cut from 40 staff to nine since the start of last year, according to the Pentagon’s own inspector general, while the department has also stopped developing a database meant to track civilian harm from US operations.
The episode has exposed a wider tension in how the White House is presenting the conflict.
Officials have sought to characterize the campaign (estimated to have cost at least $37.5bn as of July) against Iran in economic terms even as it continues to produce US military deaths, mounting Iranian civilian casualties and rising oil prices.
Polling from UMass-Amherst in late August found that 54% of Americans disapprove of the war initiated by the US and Israel, and one in six Trump voters would go back and change their vote in 2024.
The current round of fighting began after the US struck rocket launchers on Larak Island that officials said were being prepared to mine the strait, prompting Iranian missile and drone attacks on US and allied positions in Jordan, Bahrain, Kuwait and Iraq. Jordanian authorities said 13 ballistic missiles were fired at the country, of which 10 were intercepted.
Trump described Iran’s retaliation as a “love tap”, but warned that further strikes remained an option. “It was a very heavy attack last night, and we’re prepared to do another one anytime we want,” he said earlier this week.
Joseph Gedeon is a politics breaking news reporter based in Washington, DC
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US Commerce Secretary Lutnick issues bizarre apology after saying no US troops have died in Iran war
Sharon Zhang
Truthout / September 3, 2026
In his apology, Lutnick awkwardly brings up his controversial history with the 9/11 attack.
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 choke-out 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.”
Lutnick claims he was thinking of the U.S.’s Venezuela operation, in which the U.S. killed dozens of people and abducted the country’s president but did not suffer troop deaths. President Donald Trump also gave this excuse in a short post on Truth Social Thursday morning.
The commerce secretary then invoked the 9/11 attack. “As the 25th anniversary of 9/11 approaches, I am deeply thankful for our military and the sacrifices the men and women who serve our great country make, so such an attack, where I lost my brother Gary (36), my best friend Doug (39) and 656 other close friends and colleagues in the attacks on the World Trade Center, never happens again,” he said.
He is referring to the employees of his Wall Street firm, Cantor Fitzgerald, who died in the attack. At the time, he was CEO of the company.
Lutnick, who has spent the past decades speaking at length about the human toll of the attack, has faced scrutiny for several of the decisions in its aftermath — first, when the firm froze payroll to families of deceased employees shortly after the attack. The company later pledged to give the victims’ families a portion of their profits for the next five years.
Years later, when Cantor received a $135 million settlement from American Airlines over the attack, Lutnick again faced criticism when the settlement was not paid out to families of the victims, but to himself, the firm, and other executives. He took the largest share of as much as $25 million from the settlement, reports said.
The remarks are the latest instance of Trump’s cabinet sweeping aside war-related troop casualties as the war continues to weigh on the administration’s approval ratings.
Recently, a wife of one of the servicemembers killed when their aircraft crashed during a refuelling mission related to the war on March 12 said that her family has been denied benefits because Congress has not authorized the war. After her post on Instagram about her husband’s death went viral, the Air Force said that it will examine her case.
“So not only was my husband killed in a war he never wanted to participate in,” she said, “but now the benefits we’re left with are being dictated by semantics and public perception.”
Critics have said that the war is unconstitutional as only Congress has the power to declare war. Trump admitted as such in March, saying that he didn’t want to use the word “war” to describe it “because you’re supposed to get approval” from Congress.
Trump has spent the last months downplaying troop casualties, bragging that fewer troops have died than in previous wars. After U.S. troops were killed in the first days of the war, Trump faced criticism after he said: “That’s the way it is. Likely be more.”
Sharon Zhang is a news writer at Truthout covering international affairs, politics, and labour
