Ali Larijani, the pinnacle of Iran’s Nationwide Safety Council, claimed that his nation has captured United States troopers because the outbreak of warfare final week.
The claims got here in a publish Saturday on the social media platform X, during which Larijani prompt the US was concealing the captures.
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“It has been reported to me that a number of American troopers have been taken prisoner,” Larijani wrote.
“However the People declare that they’ve been killed in motion. Regardless of their futile efforts, the reality will not be one thing they’ll disguise for too lengthy.”
The US army, nevertheless, rapidly refuted the claims with its personal assertion.
“The Iranian regime is doing every little thing it will possibly to hawk lies and deceive. That is yet one more clear instance,” stated US Navy Captain Tim Hawkins in response to Larijani’s publish.
A spokesperson from US Central Command (CENTCOM) echoed Hawkins’s denial in a press release to Al Jazeera Arabic.
“The Iranian regime’s claims of capturing American troopers are yet one more instance of its lies and deceptions,” the spokesman instructed Al Jazeera Arabic.
At the least six members of the US armed forces have been killed because the warfare started on February 28, after the US and Israel launched a joint assault. The administration of President Donald Trump dubbed the army marketing campaign “Operation Epic Fury”.
The Tasnim information company in Iran has reported this week that an estimated 1,332 individuals have been killed within the warfare over the week since. That demise toll consists of roughly 180 kids who died in a strike on their college within the southeastern metropolis of Minab.
An evaluation from The New York Instances has prompt the varsity was struck by a US assault. Trump, in the meantime, blamed Iran on Saturday as he took questions from reporters aboard the presidential airplane, Air Power One.
“Based mostly on what I’ve seen, that was finished by Iran,” he stated.
Trump spent Saturday travelling backwards and forwards between his resorts in South Florida — the place he was internet hosting Latin American officers — and Dover Air Power Base in Delaware, the place the our bodies of the six troopers have been transferred again to US soil.
All six troopers have been killed on March 1, at some point into the warfare, throughout an Iranian drone strike on a Kuwait port.
The US army has recognized the lifeless troopers as Declan Cody, Jeffrey O’Brien, Cody Khork, Noah Tietjens, Nicole Amor and Robert Marzan.
“It’s a really unhappy day,” Trump stated as he left the “dignified switch” ceremony on Air Power One.
Trump has but to rule out deploying US troopers to Iran. In an interview final Monday with The New York Submit, Trump refused to commit both approach.
“Each president says, ‘There can be no boots on the bottom’. I don’t say it,” he instructed the publication.
Trump and officers like Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth have additionally warned that the US demise toll may nonetheless rise. In a phone name with NBC Information, Trump stated, “We anticipate casualties, however ultimately it’s going to be an ideal deal for the world.”
Nonetheless, the warfare has divided Trump’s “Make America Nice Once more” base, with some expressing frustration about Trump’s newest army marketing campaign.
“I actually can’t consider we’re doing this once more,” conservative media host Megyn Kelly posted on social media on Friday, responding to stories that Trump was contemplating “boots on the bottom” in Iran.
Former Congress member Marjorie Taylor Greene, in the meantime, criticised Trump for betraying his “America First” marketing campaign guarantees.
“Trump and his admin betrayed their marketing campaign guarantees of No Extra Overseas Wars/No Extra Regime Change,” Taylor Greene wrote on Wednesday, warning of voter backlash throughout the midterm elections.
“We voted for America FIRST and meaning AMERICANS FIRST AND AMERICANS ONLY.”
A ballot on Friday from the information companies NPR and PBS and the analysis agency Marist discovered {that a} majority of US residents disapproved of the continued warfare. Of the 1,591 adults surveyed, 56 p.c opposed the warfare.
