Citing reporting by The Post, lawmakers told Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that the probe is necessary because they are not confident in the Pentagon’s objectivity.
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Democratic lawmakers announced Thursday that they are opening an investigation into the Iranian drone strike that killed six U.S. service members in Kuwait earlier this year, citing doubts over the objectivity of the military’s internal review of the attack.
In a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) and Rep. Pat Ryan (D-New York) — along with almost a dozen other House and Senate Democrats — cited recent reporting by The Washington Post and other media outlets scrutinizing the March 1 strike, saying they want answers to whether the military had adequate protections in place before the attack and whether the troops received proper medical care afterward.
“The need for this investigation goes beyond the Shuaiba attack — it’s about taking accountability and protecting our service members,” Ryan, an Army and Iraq War veteran, said in a statement to The Post. He was referring to Port Shuaiba, the facility along the Persian Gulf where the deadly strike occurred. “It’s our job as members of Congress to force [Hegseth] to give us real answers and make sure something like this never happens again.”
A spokesman for Hegseth did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
It was just the second day of Operation Epic Fury, the name the Trump administration has given the conflict, when an Iranian Shahed drone crashed into the center of an Army operations center at Port Shuaiba. Dozens of service members were injured in the attack along with the six who died.
In the months since, survivors have alleged that military leaders failed to take appropriate action after being warned the facility lacked adequate defenses. Some have said, too, that troops wounded in the strike faced considerable difficulty obtaining treatment for their injuries.
Military officials have contested both assertions.
As The Post reported this month, several soldiers who were at Port Shuaiba have said they doubt the Army’s internal review will hold anyone accountable. Citing a U.S. official familiar with the review, The Post also reported that the initial findings did not assign fault for the attack or address any punitive action.
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The Army has shared its findings with the families of some of the fallen service members but has not released that information publicly.
In their letter to Hegseth, lawmakers questioned the seriousness and independence of the Army’s internal review, citing other reporting by The Post that revealed the task was assigned initially to a midgrade officer within the affected unit instead of an outside investigator.
The matter was later elevated to a more senior officer at U.S. Army Central, the affected unit’s parent command. Outside observers have said they were skeptical of the move, noting that it still left the review to be overseen by personnel in the same chain of command.
The lack of an independent investigator, coupled with new concerns about the Pentagon’s transparency and recordkeeping, raise questions about “whether investigations into service member casualty incidents will be conducted objectively,” Warren wrote in the letter.
Citing Democrats’ concerns about the Defense Department’s “failures to provide service members that sustained injuries in this war with adequate care and its inability to honestly and openly inform the American people about the consequences of this war,” the lawmakers have chosen to pursue answers on their own, the letter says.
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They requested a response from the Pentagon by Aug. 12.
Noah Robertson contributed to this report.
