Mohsen Rezaei said on Monday that Iran killed hundreds of US soldiers in strikes throughout July and wounded hundreds more, a claim delivered through regime-owned Press TV while Washington and Tehran traded numbers, threats and denials over a widening air war. Rezaei, Iran's military advisor to Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, framed the conflict as a contest between states, but the people paying for it are the soldiers, civilians and shipping crews caught under the machinery of both governments.
The State Counts Its Dead
Press TV said the US admitted to a total of 650 casualties, including both those killed and wounded, in the recent strikes. Iranian sources, meanwhile, estimated nearly 500 US soldiers killed. The latest information from US Central Command, according to the article, showed four US soldiers were killed in Jordan and Iraq in July 2026, and a further 14 were killed earlier in the year during Operation Epic Fury. It also said that in late July, 417 soldiers were listed as having been wounded during the war with Iran, with an additional 207 soldiers listed as having been wounded in "Overseas Operations."
Those figures sit inside a larger cycle of escalation that has done what state violence always does: expand the battlefield and call it strategy. Rezaei's statement came amid months of US airstrikes intended to reduce Iran’s ability to threaten commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz and compel Tehran to return to negotiations, with the most recent round having begun in July. Repeated US escalations have been met by increasing Iranian responses against US forces in the region, as well as against Washington's Gulf-Arab allies and shipping. The states fire. The region absorbs the blast.
Negotiations, Threats and the Usual Theater
Rezaei said Israel stayed out of the most recent US-Iran conflict because resources were already stretched too thin in Gaza, Lebanon and the West Bank. He said it was a facade to make the US seem like a strong, independent entity while the "Zionist regime" pressures the US into the conflict. He also said the US's "desperate maneuvers" risk starting a third world war which would be far more destructive than World War II, echoing a statement Trump made just hours earlier in the Oval Office.
Trump alleged that Iran, with the backing of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, initiated renewed talks because they "did not want to be hit" by strikes Trump claimed would have been the biggest attacks since World War II. He made that claim after announcing renewed negotiations between the two nations while speaking to reporters on Air Force One on Sunday. The choreography is familiar: leaders threaten catastrophe, then present talks as restraint, while the military pressure that created the crisis stays in place.
Earlier on Monday, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said no negotiations with the United States were taking place, and no meetings were scheduled. He said Iran had no plans to host foreign delegations or send negotiators abroad in the coming days. The diplomatic script, such as it is, keeps changing by the hour. The coercive apparatus does not.
Who Gets to Call It Diplomacy
Rezaei also said Iran prefers diplomacy over continued war, and that the United States is a "warmonger." He asked, "It was America that attacked our country and our people, martyred our Leader and our children. Did we attack them and massacre their nation?" The line lands because it names the asymmetry that state officials usually bury under flags and press conferences: one side claims self-defense, the other claims retaliation, and ordinary people are left under the wreckage.
The article's numbers, denials and counterclaims show how the state system narrates its own violence. Washington says it is pressuring Tehran back to negotiations. Tehran says it prefers diplomacy while denying talks are underway. Both sides speak in the language of necessity. Both keep the machinery running. The shipping lanes, the airstrikes, the military advisories, the casualty tallies — all of it belongs to the same apparatus, and all of it lands on people who didn't get a vote in any of it.