Lutnick apologizes for asserting that there ‘haven’t been American deaths’ from the Iran war

US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick publicly apologized on Thursday after falsely asserting that no Americans had died during the Trump administration’s war with Iran. Lutnick made the claim while defending the war in an interview on CNBC, saying that “the way the president is playing Iran, right, there haven’t been American deaths. It’s really just an economic chokeout which the administration is now executing more broadly, and I think it’ll be very effective.” 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 hours-long invasion of Venezuela. “While speaking yesterday at the G20 innovation summit about AI, I answered a question about the military actions in Iran, I misspoke,” he wrote.