The United States Army recorded this Sunday its seventh casualty in the war against Iran: a soldier died on Saturday in Saudi Arabia due to the injuries he received on March 1, when the Iranian regime launched its first wave of retaliatory attacks against US positions throughout the region. His identity is being kept private until the authorities notify his family.
The Central Command (CENTCOM) reported in a statement that the soldier died “as a result of injuries sustained during the initial attacks by the Iranian regime”. The agency did not provide details about the circumstances of the attack or the unit to which the deceased belonged. According to the usual Army protocol, the identity is not disclosed until 24 hours after the family is notified.
The previous six casualties also occurred on March 1st, in Kuwait, when an Iranian drone directly hit a tactical operations center at the port of Shuaiba. The six identified soldiers were reservists: Major Jeffrey O’Brien (45 years old), Captain Cody Khork (35), First Sergeant Noah Tietjens (42), First Sergeant Nicole Amor (39), Sergeant Declan Coady (20, posthumously promoted) and Chief Warrant Officer Robert Marzan (54). All belonged to the 103rd Support Command based in Des Moines, Iowa.
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President
Donald Trump presided on Saturday at Dover Air Force Base, Delaware, over the dignified transfer of those first six fallen. Alongside Vice President
JD Vance, Secretary of Defense
Pete Hegseth, and First Lady
Melania Trump, he rendered the military salute as each of the caskets wrapped in the American flag passed by. After the ceremony, aboard Air Force One, he described the moment as “a very sad day” and reaffirmed ongoing operations: “We are winning the war by a lot.”
The war began on February 28 with joint attacks by the United States and Israel that caused the death of the Iranian supreme leader, the
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, along with several members of his family. Iran responded with waves of missiles and drones against Israel and a dozen countries where US troops or bases operate: Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Jordan, among others.
Most of those attacks were intercepted, although the consequences reached civilian infrastructure. Bahrain accused Iran of damaging one of its desalination plants, facilities that supply water to millions of people in the Gulf. In Saudi Arabia, Iranian projectiles hit facilities near the Ras Tanura refinery, one of the largest in the world, fueling fears of a disruption in regional energy supply.
Following Khamenei’s death, Iran’s Assembly of Experts designated this Sunday
Mojtaba Khamenei as the country’s new supreme leader, replacing his father,
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
In an extensive statement, the assembly declared that “after careful and extensive studies… in today’s extraordinary session, Ayatollah Seyyed Mojtaba Hosseini Khamenei (may Allah protect him) is designated and presented as
the third leader of the sacred system of the Islamic Republic of Iran, based on the decisive vote of the respected representatives of the Assembly of Experts.”
The seventh American casualty illustrates the growing geographical scope of the conflict: it is no longer limited to Kuwait, but extends to Saudi Arabia, whose direct exposure complicates the political equation of a war that, according to Trump himself, could last between four and five weeks.
