Defense

Senate Democrats press Hegseth over cuts to offices that limit risk to civilian casualties

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by Filip Timotija - 04/20/26 4:22 PM ET

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by Filip Timotija - 04/20/26 4:22 PM ET

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A group of Senate Democrats led by Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) are pressing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth about cuts to offices that limit risk to civilian casualties and their impact during the U.S.’s recent strikes against Iran.

The 11 senators asked Hegseth about the execution of the military strikes inside Iran and what steps and precautions the Pentagon is taking to prevent and respond to civilian harm from the U.S. and its allies.

The seven-page letter, which was sent to the Pentagon on Sunday, referenced four incidents where the U.S. military was or may have been responsible for civilian harm inside Iran, including a Tomahawk missile strike on a girls elementary school in Minab where 175 children and teachers were killed, a ballistic missile strike on an elementary school and sports hall in Lamerd where at least 21 people were killed and an attack on a major highway bridge near Tehran where a minimum of eight people were killed.

“We are concerned that these were all preventable tragedies. The high human toll of this war reflects the administration’s broader disregard for the strategic, legal, and moral imperative to minimize civilian harm,” the senators wrote in the letter.

The lawmakers mentioned the cuts at the Pentagon’s Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response office and the department’s Civilian Protection Center of Excellence, moves that were made over objections of senior military officials. Since the U.S. began its strike inside Iran in late February, the hits on civilian infrastructure have led to over 1,700 civilian deaths, they said.

“This is a concerning pattern and raises questions about whether the administration is upholding international law and the laws of war,” the senators wrote.

When reached for comment, the Pentagon told The Hill that, as with all “congressional correspondences, the Department will respond directly to the authors.”

Democrats said Hegseth’s “attempts to gut DoD’s civilian harm institutions contradicts more than a decade of bipartisan consensus and DoD-led reforms, initiated during the first Trump administration, to systematically prevent, and address civilian harm” in the Pentagon’s operations.

“This included unifying a civilian harm reporting process that was fragmented across the military services and developing a set of standard assessment procedures to analyze instances of civilian harm caused by U.S. forces,” they wrote in the letter.

The senators asked Hegseth more than a dozen questions, including how many civilians were killed since the strikes against Iran on Feb. 28 and how many of them were due to U.S. operations, if the U.S. military used cluster bombs to disperse mines and the status of the Pentagon’s investigation into the airstrike on Minab.

The lawmakers said the Pentagon should provide answers by May 4.

“The importance of protecting civilian life to the greatest extent possible is central to effective military operations and differentiates the United States from our adversaries,” the senators said.

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