Iranian Army Chief of Staff and Deputy Coordinator Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari accused the United States on Monday of concealing its Iran war casualties.
Speaking on Iranian television that evening, Sayyari argued that American deaths and injuries exceeded publicly disclosed figures. He offered no alternative casualty total.
Three unnamed US officials told NBC News that an Iranian cruise missile strike injured eight American Marines aboard a vessel in the Strait of Hormuz two weeks earlier.
Sayyari maintained that the scale of Iran’s missile and drone attacks made the disclosed losses implausible. His accusation concerned both fatalities and injuries.
He separately asserted that Iranian forces controlled access to the strait. Sayyari described how the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the regular military divided naval responsibilities.
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According to his account, the IRGC Navy controls the Persian Gulf and the strait’s western section. Iran’s regular navy controls its eastern section and the northern Indian Ocean. He claimed that vessels require authorisation to pass.
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Sayyari also declared that Iran’s adversaries had failed to meet their objectives in three conflicts. He cited the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, the June 2025 conflict and a 40-day war launched in February.
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Describing Iran’s current confrontation as military, economic and political, he accused its enemies of using psychological warfare to create divisions. He called Iran’s “territorial integrity a red line” for its armed forces.
