US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick apologized Thursday after falsely asserting that no Americans had died during the Trump administration's war with Iran.
Lutnick made the claim Wednesday during an interview on CNBC while attending the Group of 20 finance summit in North Carolina. He said the administration's strategy involved an "economic choke out" of Iran and stated that "there haven't been American deaths. It's really just an economic chokeout which the administration is now executing more broadly."
In fact, 18 US service members have died since the US first attacked Iran in February. Hundreds more have been wounded.
In a Thursday morning post on X, Lutnick said he "misspoke" and had confused the six-month war in Iran with the administration's prior military operation in Venezuela. "I misspoke. 18 members of our military have died, and to those families my heart breaks and I am so very sorry for their loss. I was thinking about the Venezuelan military operation where no service members died," Lutnick wrote.
President Donald Trump defended his Commerce secretary on Truth Social before Lutnick's public apology. "Sec. Lutnick had Venezuela on his mind when he said nobody was killed," Trump wrote. "18 people were killed in Iran!"
The conflict has been active for more than six months. Trump had predicted the war would last four to five weeks.
On Thursday morning, Iran's army claimed it conducted overnight strikes on US military bases in Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.