Senate Tuberville on US deaths in Iran operation: ‘It’s going to get worse before it gets better’ by Ryan Mancini - 03/03/26 6:40 PM ET by Ryan Mancini - 03/03/26 6:40 PM ET Share ✕ LinkedIn LinkedIn Email Email NOW PLAYING Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) on Monday said that the war and number of deaths of U.S. service members following the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran will “get worse before it gets better.” He praised President Trump for “doing the right thing” in carrying out the strikes on Saturday, which killed Iran’s supreme leader , Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and 742 Iranian civilians, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency . “We took out the leaders,” Tuberville said in an interview with anchor Ed Henry on Newsmax. “I don’t know who they had running the show, but they started pushing the buttons to the missiles and started hitting their neighbors. And the neighbors are all mad now. So, it’s just unfortunate.” “We lost what you said earlier, six people now,” he continued. “And my understanding is that they were in Kuwait, in one of their neighbors, and they got hit. So it’s just unfortunate that happened. But this is war — it’s going to get worse before it gets better. But I’m telling you who’s going to win this war. The United States of America is gonna win this war.” Tuberville previously said on “Katie Pavlich Tonight” on NewsNation, The Hill’s sister network, on Monday that he spoke with Trump two weeks ago and the senator had “a pretty good feeling he was going in.” He also called the operation “not your Democrat war, this is President Trump’s war.” The six service members were killed in a strike on a tactical operations center at the Shuaiba port in a makeshift office space in Kuwait on Sunday. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said Iran attacked with a “powerful” weapon that broke through air defenses U.S. Central Command (Centcom) said Sunday that three service members were  killed in the fighting  against Iran. On Monday, a fourth service member died after they were seriously injured, then the remains of two service members were recovered from a facility struck during Iran’s “initial attacks” in the region. Trump on Sunday said that more U.S. service members will “ likely ” die. “That’s the way it is,” he said in a video he shared on Truth Social that day. “[There will] likely be more but we’ll do everything possible where that won’t be the case.” The deaths drew criticism from Rep. Pat Ryan (D-N.Y.), an Army veteran who served in the Iraq War. He called Trump “ pathetic ” for not taking reporters’ questions about the service members’ deaths. “For the president to not answer those questions, to have nothing to say to those family members, is pathetic,” he told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins. “It’s pathetic. And it’s because he doesn’t have answers. There is not a plan here, if [there] is he’s not sharing it with the American people.” Add as preferred source on Google Tags Ali Khamenei Ayatollah Ali Khamenei Donald Trump Ed Henry Kaitlan Collins Pat Ryan Pete Hegseth Tommy Tuberville Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Share ✕ LinkedIn LinkedIn Email Email More Senate News See All Defense Graham predicts Gulf states will join US-Israel assault on Iran by Filip Timotija 23 minutes ago Defense  /  23 minutes ago