How Many US Troops Were Killed By Iranian IEDs in Iraq?
Between October 2006 and September 2007, EFPs killed 97 U.S. troops and wounded more than 300 soldiers. EFP attacks peaked in March, April and May 2008, near the end of the American troop surge, when 200 of the bombs were detonated. The deadliest month was April 2008, when EFPs killed 15 U.S. soldiers.
The Pentagon attributes the presence of EFPs in Iraq to the Quds Force, the special forces arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard led by Qasem Soleimani. Various EFP “factories” were
found throughout Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Still, the exact degree to which Iran bears culpability for arming Shia militias in Iraq with EFPs and related equipment is a
matter of some dispute.
“We weren’t always able to attribute the casualties that we had to Iranian activity, although many times we suspected it was Iranian activity, even though we didn’t necessarily have the forensics to support that,” Gen. Joseph Dunford, the incoming chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at his July 9 confirmation hearing. During the hearing, Dunford said the numbers of American soldiers killed by Iran “has been recently quoted as about 500.”
CENTCOM later clarified that Dunford was referring to total American deaths by EFPs and other Iranian weapons. It is “important to understand that the CENTCOM statistics on EFP detonations are a subset of all the Iranian activities estimated to have killed approximately 500 U.S. troops in Iraq during OIF,” Maj. Genieve David, a CENTCOM spokeswoman, said in an email. Data about the roughly 300 deaths not caused by EFPs, including the kind of weapons used in the attacks, is classified, David said.
A few weeks later, at the July 29 hearing, Gen. Martin Dempsey, the outgoing Joint Chiefs chairman, said “several hundred” American forces were killed by EFPs.
Phil Novack, a spokesman for Cruz, told
Defense One that the Senator’s office is working with the Pentagon to get specific numbers. He said Cruz used the 500 number based on Dunford’s testimony.