Insiders Fear Steep Civilian Toll In Iran After Trump Slashed Pentagon Personnel

WASHINGTON ― As he bombs Iran, President Donald Trump is waging his first large-scale conflict since he sharply increased the risk of the U.S. military causing massive civilian casualties and war crimes.

The administration is presenting disdain for standards in warfare as a feature, not a bug. The U.S. is acting with “no stupid rules of engagement,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Monday, casting that approach as superior to “politically correct wars.” But Hegseth’s rhetoric and policy choices by the administration before the war could have dire consequences ― hurting innocent people, American forces themselves and the success of Trump’s mission.

Since Trump returned to office in January 2025, the number of personnel tasked with minimizing harm to civilians across the Defense Department has sharply decreased, two sources familiar with discussions in the U.S. military about civilian harm told HuffPost. They spoke on condition of anonymity to describe internal dynamics.

One said the staff in such positions has dropped from 165 to a handful. The Civilian Protection Center of Excellence, a Pentagon office that provides advice on limiting casualties in combat and investigates the toll of military operations, has had its staff reduced from between 30 and 40 staffers at the beginning of the administration to only seven today, according to the other source. (The Army attempted to shutter the office altogether, but its existence was mandated by Congress.)

And many officials at military commands who worked on analyzing the civilian environment in war-zones and “red-teaming” ― the process of gut-checking whether a particular attack is appropriate and legally defensible ― have been reassigned to other jobs.

“It’s not a great time to be doing this because the institutional knowledge that was meant to be there to capture [the effect on civilians] is gone,” the first source said, saying they were “extremely concerned,” and noting reports that the joint U.S.-Israeli bombing has hit Iranian schools and hospitals.

U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), the branch of the military responsible for operations in the Middle East, still has some personnel dedicated to limiting civilian harm, the two sources said, with one saying the branch chose to retain the largest such team among combatant commands.

Still, that source expressed doubts about the influence of those officials given the Trump administration’s approach to the war: “Tools for civilian harm mitigation work… if you have the time and resources to implement them. I don’t understand how you do that with 1,000 strikes in a day in populated areas.”

Four days into the conflict, U.S.-Israeli attacks have killed at least 742 Iranian civilians, including 176 children, and wounded 971 others, per Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), an Iranian rights group. The very first day of bombing saw a missile strike a school, killing at least 165, mostly young girls, and reports indicate strikes are escalating in residential areas of Tehran, home to 9 million people.

CENTCOM did not respond to a request for comment. Last summer, CENTCOM chief Brad Cooper said harm to civilians by U.S. forces “risks our credibility and trust and puts our troops at risk.”

Civilian protections and other aspects of the laws of war emphasize basic human rights; the difference between combatants and the uninvolved; and the potential that any one could be vulnerable and need such protections. The U.S., other countries and global institutions like the International Criminal Court probe war crimes and other breaches of international law, which means troops involved in them may face prosecution. And military operations which pummel civilians are often self-defeating, breeding backlash and lasting instability.

Within Iran, fears of widespread harm to innocents are growing.

“It’s just horrific,” said Negar Mortazavi, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy think tank who is originally from Iran. “If you’re a civilian in Iran, even if you don’t like the regime, you’re still bound to live right next to everybody, so you don’t know if you are a target or not.”

Annie Shiel, the U.S. advocacy director of the Center for Civilians in Conflict (CIVIC) nonprofit, assessed that between limited information from the ground and the sheer number of U.S.-Israeli strikes, reports of civilian harm so far “are certainly just the tip of the iceberg.”

Iran’s own retaliation has hit civilian targets in the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, while in Lebanon, the pro-Iran militia Hezbollah has attacked Israel, and Israeli forces have responded with bombing and an advance into Lebanese territory.

“The best chance we have to reduce civilian harm in Iran and across the region is through de-escalation,” Shiel said.

Mortazavi described difficulty in communications among Iranians given internet blackouts by the government. Family WhatsApp groups have mostly gone silent, she said, and she has resorted to tracking down one family member, then having them use landlines to ensure others are safe. Meanwhile, people trying to flee the capital have faced checkpoints and hours in queues at gas stations and in traffic, with some simply giving up to remain amid fear, bombing, and cuts of electricity and water supplies. She recalled growing up during Iran’s devastating war in the 1980s with its neighbor Iraq, saying many Iranians fear reliving that experience.

The fears are bolstered by the Trump administration’s alignment in the campaign with Israel, which faces accusations of committing extensive war crimes in its war in Gaza since 2023, and the U.S.’ general record on interventions and international law.

“A big chunk of Iranians… resent the status quo, but they are also skeptical of how military action can bring change, especially when done by a state like the U.S., who has an absolute failed track record of trying to do this in the region, in conjunction with another state who’s basically conducting a genocide elsewhere,” Mortazavi said, noting that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is wanted by the ICC over alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes.

Netanyahu denies any basis for his ICC arrest warrant, and Israel’s military says it respects international law. But concerns about Israel’s approach to fighting are widespread among experts and some U.S. officials, and its role could further diminish concern for civilians in the Iran campaign.

Israel’s view of a justified target is “rather permissive,” one source familiar with U.S. military thinking noted. “You start from a different place where everything is an existential threat,” which increases the tolerance for collateral damage, they continued, and the Israelis “don’t care what the world thinks about them.”

The source said U.S. officials might claim “plausible deniability” for alarming attacks in the joint campaign. But it is hard to limit reputational damage in a war in which the two countries are obviously intertwined.

John Ramming Chappell, CIVIC’s advocacy and legal adviser, noted that the U.S. government itself acknowledged Israel had likely broken international law in Gaza, though former President Joe Biden still declined to limit American military support for its war there.

“Now the United States has decided that it is going to embark on a joint aerial bombing campaign with Israel. It boggles the mind that that is the lesson the U.S. has taken from Gaza,” Chappell said. Within Israel’s military, “We haven’t seen anywhere near the scale of accountability that one would hope for in light of the scale of violations in Gaza.”

Meanwhile, the Trump administration itself has repeatedly challenged the idea of U.S. or international law limiting its actions internationally ― and avoided consequences for that disregard.

In a statement after Hegseth’s remarks, Human Rights Watch said the secretary “has deliberately and systematically weakened the protections meant to ensure compliance with the laws of armed conflict.”

The administration has cut mandatory trainings for soldiers on the laws of war; replaced the judge advocate generals of the Navy, Air Force and Army; embraced weapons that often kill and maim civilians like cluster munitions and landmines; and, as HuffPost revealed last year, spurred an exodus of career State Department officials who are meant to ensure U.S. compliance with international law, with those remaining fearful about offering frank advice.

Amid his new war, Trump is continuing to launch strikes against accused drug smugglers in the waters around South America, in a monthslong campaign that has killed at least 150 people, even as lawmakers and watchdogs have noted the targets rarely pose any threat and some have even been shipwrecked.

“The administration has managed to manufacture a scaffolding of faux legality for what is really a campaign of mass murder at sea,” Chappell said. “The fact that we have not seen a significant break from that policy is a very bad sign for the status of the rule of law in the U.S. military and the United States more broadly.”

In another sign of concern about procedures in the military, more than 100 service members have filed complaints saying commanders have inappropriately used religious ideology in justifying the Iran war, in some instances referencing a Biblical vision of a river of blood.