Trump administration denies reports that Iran captured US soldiers

The head of Iran’s National Security Council had claimed the US was misrepresenting the captures as combat deaths.

Ali Larijani, the head of Iran’s National Security Council, claimed that his country has captured United States soldiers since the outbreak of war last week.

The comments came in a post on Saturday on the social media platform X, in which Larijani suggested the US was concealing the captures.

“It has been reported to me that several American soldiers have been taken prisoner,” Larijani wrote.

“But the Americans claim that they have been killed in action. Despite their futile efforts, the truth is not something they can hide for too long.”

The US military, however, quickly refuted the claims with its own statement.

“The Iranian ⁠regime is ⁠doing everything it can to peddle lies and deceive. ‌This is yet another clear example,” said US Navy Captain Tim Hawkins in response to Larijani’s post.

A spokesperson from US Central Command (CENTCOM) echoed Hawkins’s denial in a statement to Al Jazeera Arabic.

“The Iranian regime’s claims of capturing American soldiers are yet another example of its lies and deceptions,” the spokesman said.

At least six members of the US armed forces have been killed since the war began on February 28, after the US and Israel launched a joint attack. The administration of US President Donald Trump dubbed the military campaign “Operation Epic Fury”.

The Tasnim news agency in Iran reported this week that an estimated 1,332 people have been killed in the war since last week. That death toll includes approximately 180 children who died in a strike on a school in the southeastern city of Minab.

An analysis from The New York Times has suggested the school was struck by the US. Trump, however, blamed Iran as he took questions from reporters while on board the presidential plane, Air Force One.

“Based on what I’ve seen, that was done by Iran,” he said on Saturday.

Trump spent the day travelling back and forth between his resort in South Florida – where he was hosting Latin American officials – and Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where the bodies of the killed soldiers were transferred.

All six were killed on March 1, one day into the war, during an Iranian drone strike on a Kuwait port.

The US military has identified the dead soldiers as Declan Cody, Jeffrey O’Brien, Cody Khork, Noah Tietjens, Nicole Amor and Robert Marzan.

“It’s a very sad day. I’m glad we paid our respects. It’s tough. It’s a tough situation,” Trump said as he left the “dignified transfer” ceremony on Air Force One.

Still, he struck an upbeat note about the war itself, calling its progress “as good as it could be”.

“ We’re winning the war by a lot. We’ve decimated their whole evil empire,” Trump said of Iran.

Trump has yet to rule out deploying US soldiers to Iran. In an interview last Monday with The New York Post, Trump refused to commit either way.

“Every president says, ‘There will be no boots on the ground’. I don’t say it,” he told the publication.

Trump and officials like Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth have also warned that the US death toll could continue to rise.

In a telephone call with NBC News, Trump said, “We expect casualties, but in the end, it’s going to be a great deal for the world.”

He has estimated the war could last four to five weeks.

The war has divided Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) base, with some expressing frustration with the president’s latest military offensive.

Critics pointed out that Trump campaigned for re-election on the promise not to “fight endless wars”.

“I honestly can’t believe we’re doing this again,” conservative media host Megyn Kelly posted on social media on Friday, responding to reports that Trump was considering “boots on the ground” in Iran.

Former Congress member Marjorie Taylor Greene, meanwhile, criticised Trump for betraying his “America First” campaign promises.

“Trump and his admin betrayed their campaign promises of No More Foreign Wars/No More Regime Change,” Taylor Greene wrote on Wednesday, warning of voter backlash during the midterm elections.

“We voted for America FIRST and that means AMERICANS FIRST AND AMERICANS ONLY,” she added.

A poll on Friday from the news agencies NPR and PBS and the research firm Marist found that a majority of US citizens disapproved of the war.

Of the 1,591 adults surveyed, 56 percent opposed the conflict.

“This is an unpopular war, according to all the polling data we’ve seen in the last week,” said Al Jazeera correspondent Kimberly Halkett.

“Most Americans believe that this is one that cannot be afforded – and cannot be afforded in terms of the potential loss of life, given the fact we’ve now had six Americans killed, and their bodies returned to the United States.”