U.S.-Israel war with Iran statistics & facts

The U.S.-Israel war with Iran in numbers, February to July 2026

The U.S.-Israel war with Iran began on February 28, 2026, when the two countries launched coordinated strikes on Iran under the codenames Operation Roaring Lion and Operation Epic Fury. Iran reported more than 3,400 deaths by June 2026 and oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz fell by about 30 percent. Few conflicts have produced a statistical record as contradictory as this one, where the same week can be described with death tolls differing by thousands depending on which authority is doing the counting. On the reported figures, Iran recorded 3,468 deaths to June 10, Lebanon 4,301 to July 4, Israel between 24 and 35, Gulf states 28 between them and the United States between 17 and 20 service personnel.

The economic shock reached far beyond the region, with Brent crude rising from about 71 to 94 dollars a barrel in ten days. The wider market picture sits within our financial markets and largest economies by GDP coverage.

A 30 percent collapse: oil through the Strait of Hormuz fell from about 20.7 million barrels a day in late 2025 to 14.6 million in the first quarter of 2026, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Casualty figures remain contested. Iran, Lebanon, Israel and the Gulf states each report through different authorities, and independent trackers publish figures that differ by thousands, a gap this overview shows rather than hides.

A note on the data. This is an active conflict and the numbers move. Every figure here names the body that reported it and the date it was reported. Where sources conflict, the range appears instead of a single number. Readers should treat every casualty number on this page as provisional. Health ministries revise totals, independent trackers apply different criteria, and figures published today will not match figures published next month. The sources drawn on here are the U.S. Energy Information Administration and the International Energy Agency for energy data, SIPRI for military expenditure, national health ministries for casualties, and open-source trackers for campaign detail.

Key Reported Figures and Their Sources

The table sets out the main reported figures of the war alongside the source and date for each one. It shows how widely the casualty counts differ by reporting authority, and how sharply the energy figures moved after February 28. Reading down the source column shows the problem in one view, with four different bodies reporting four different totals for the same conflict over overlapping periods. Because this is a live conflict, the table is a snapshot of what had been reported by late July 2026 rather than a settled account, and it should be checked against current reporting before being cited.

How the War Unfolded

The war opened on February 28, 2026 with coordinated strikes on Tehran, Isfahan, Qom, Karaj and Kermanshah. Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was confirmed killed within hours, and Iran retaliated with drones and ballistic missiles across the Persian Gulf. The shape of the war matters for reading its numbers, because it has run in distinct phases separated by ceasefires rather than as one continuous campaign, and different trackers start and stop their counts at different points.

The campaign ran to April 8, 2026, when a Pakistan-mediated ceasefire took hold, before a fourteen-point memorandum of understanding was signed in Switzerland on June 19 and broke down again in July.

The war escalated again through July. By July 23 the United States reported a thirteenth consecutive night of strikes, Iran rejected an Iraqi-mediated ceasefire proposal, and the Revolutionary Guard declared the Strait of Hormuz under its control after a tanker was set ablaze. The phased structure of the war, with strikes resuming after each agreement broke down, is the main reason cumulative totals from different trackers drift apart the longer the conflict runs.

The conflict has therefore run in phases rather than continuously, which is a large part of why cumulative totals differ so much between trackers. Counts that began on February 28 and counts that restart after each ceasefire produce very different numbers for the same war.

How Many People Have Died?

Reported deaths differ sharply by country and by source. Iran reported 3,468 deaths to June 10, 2026 through its Ministry of Health, while the rights group HRANA put the figure above 3,636 in July. Lebanon reported 4,301 deaths through its Ministry of Health on July 4. Casualty reporting in an active war is never a neutral exercise, since the figures are produced by governments and organisations with stakes in how the conflict is understood, and they should be read with that in mind. Iran 3,468 deaths reported to June 10 by its Ministry of Health, Lebanon 4,301 deaths and 12,199 wounded reported to July 4, and Israel between 24 and 35 deaths depending on the reporting body.

Israel reported far lower numbers, between 24 and about 57 deaths depending on the source and the cut-off date, alongside several thousand injuries, a contrast that reflects missile defence and shelter systems rather than any dispute about the underlying events.

Sources and dates differ: Lebanon and Iran report the highest tolls, each through their health ministries, while Israeli and Gulf figures are an order of magnitude lower.

The Iranian Ministry of Health reported that the dead ranged in age from eight months to 88 years and included seven infants, 376 children and 496 women. Gulf states reported 28 deaths between them and the United States reported between 17 and 20 service personnel killed. The demographic detail released by the Iranian Ministry of Health, covering ages from infancy to 88, is among the few pieces of granular casualty information published by any party to the conflict.

Which Countries Were Hit?

The war was fought between three countries but strikes were reported on the territory of twelve. Beyond Iran, Israel and the United States, attacks were recorded in Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Cyprus and every member of the Gulf Cooperation Council.

The spread explains why a bilateral confrontation produced regional economic damage, with Iraq alone reporting that the war has erased up to 45 billion dollars from its economy, a scale that dwarfs the direct military cost to most of the countries involved.

Most launches at Gulf states were intercepted, and the 28 deaths reported across those countries are small beside the tolls in Iran and Lebanon. The geographic reach still matters, because it is what turned a regional war into a global shipping and energy problem.

Why Do Casualty Figures Differ So Much?

The Israeli death toll is the clearest example of why war statistics diverge. The Times of Israel reported 24 civilian deaths, the Israeli Ministry of Health 27 to 28, the Institute for National Security Studies 35 including military personnel, and cross-source compilations about 57 by late July. Anyone comparing two published death tolls for this war will usually find the difference lies not in the events being counted but in the rules being used to count them. The divergence is not evidence that any one source is dishonest. It is the predictable result of different organisations answering slightly different questions with different data and different deadlines.

The gap is definitional rather than factual. Some counts include military deaths, some do not, some count only direct strike deaths, and cut-off dates differ, a problem our data and market terminology coverage touches in a different context.

Why the numbers differ: four reputable sources give four different Israeli death tolls for the same war, from 24 to about 57, because each counts to a different definition and cut-off date.

Injury figures diverge even further, from about 4,292 reported by the Israeli Ministry of Health to 7,738 compiled by the Institute for National Security Studies. Anyone citing a single number for this war should say which body produced it and on what date. The practical lesson is that a single headline number for war casualties is almost always misleading, and the useful question is always which body counted, what they counted and when they stopped counting.

What Happened to Oil Through Hormuz?

Oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz fell to 14.6 million barrels a day in the first quarter of 2026, down almost 30 percent from 20.7 million in the previous quarter, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Crude accounted for 10.7 million of that total. The Strait of Hormuz is the reason a regional war became a global economic event, since a passage twenty-one miles wide at its narrowest carries a fifth of the petroleum the world consumes. Hormuz flows ran at 20.3 million barrels a day in 2024 and 20.9 million in the first half of 2025, peaked around 21 million in 2018 and 2022, and fell to 14.6 million in the first quarter of 2026.

The strait normally carries about a fifth of global petroleum consumption and roughly a quarter of all seaborne oil trade, which is why a regional conflict moved global prices, as our US financial markets coverage frames.

Six million barrels lost: Hormuz flows fell by about 6.1 million barrels a day between the fourth quarter of 2025 and the first quarter of 2026.

Mostly crude: of the 14.6 million barrels a day still transiting Hormuz in the first quarter of 2026, about 10.7 million was crude oil and 3.9 million petroleum liquids.

Iran declared the strait closed to Western-allied shipping after February 28. Tanker traffic collapsed from a historical average of about 138 vessels a day to a single commercial transit on March 7, and Lloyds List Intelligence assessed no Western-allied transits at all after May 4. The Revolutionary Guard has since operated a toll regime charging vessels up to 2 million dollars, payable in yuan or cryptocurrency. A drop from roughly 138 vessels a day to one is the kind of figure that conveys the disruption more clearly than any percentage, and it explains the speed of the price reaction.

How Much Did Oil Prices Rise?

Brent crude has moved in waves with the fighting. It rose from about 71 dollars a barrel on February 27, 2026 to about 94 by March 9, fell back after the April ceasefire, and passed 100 dollars again on July 23 after settling at 71.57 dollars on July 1. Oil markets price risk before they price shortage, which is why the sharpest move came in the first ten days of the conflict rather than at the point of greatest disruption.

Energy shocks of this kind feed through to fertiliser, freight and food prices within months, a chain our chemical industry coverage traces through petrochemical feedstocks.

Three spikes, not one: Brent rose to about 94 dollars by 9 March, passed 100 in April and again in late May, fell to 71.57 on 1 July, then climbed back above 100 by 23 July.

The July move was the sharpest of the war, a rise of about 40 percent in three weeks. American pump prices peaked at 4.56 dollars a gallon in late May, and the United States Strategic Petroleum Reserve has fallen to its lowest level since 1983. The reduced American exposure to Gulf oil, built on a decade of domestic shale production, is the single biggest reason the price shock was absorbed more easily than comparable disruptions in the past.

Who Depends on the Strait?

Asia carries most of the exposure. About 84 percent of the crude oil and condensate shipped through the Strait of Hormuz in 2024 was bound for Asian markets, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, with Saudi Arabia supplying roughly 38 percent of the flow. Who actually depends on the strait is one of the most misunderstood parts of the story, and the answer has changed considerably over the past decade.

That concentration explains why the sharpest economic effects landed on importers thousands of miles from the fighting, a pattern our global stock markets by country coverage frames.

There is no practical alternative route for most of this volume. The Saudi East-West pipeline can carry only a fraction of it, which is why the strait is described as the most important oil chokepoint in the world. The absence of a workable alternative route is what gives the strait its strategic weight, and no pipeline capacity built to date meaningfully changes that arithmetic.

Who Spends the Most on Defence?

The United States spent about 954 billion dollars on its military in 2025 according to SIPRI, more than the next nine countries combined. China followed on about 336 billion, Russia on 190 billion and Germany on 114 billion. Military expenditure figures are the most reliable statistics in any conflict, since they are published annually through established methodologies rather than compiled under fire. The United States 954 billion dollars in 2025 leads SIPRI rankings ahead of China on 336 billion, Russia on 190 billion, Germany on 114 billion, India on 92.1 billion, the United Kingdom on 89 billion and Ukraine on 84.1 billion.

Military spending on this scale shapes national budgets and industrial policy, a link our US GDP coverage explores.

The US leads by far: American military expenditure of about 954 billion dollars in 2025 exceeded the next nine countries combined, according to SIPRI.

Saudi Arabia, at about 83.2 billion dollars, and Ukraine, at about 84.1 billion, both appear in the top ten, showing how heavily the regions closest to active conflict weigh in the global totals. The presence of two countries at war in the top ten global spenders is itself a comment on how much of world military expenditure is now driven by active conflict rather than deterrence.

Which Country Carries the Heaviest Burden?

Measured against the size of the economy rather than in dollars, the ranking changes completely. Ukraine spent about 40 percent of GDP on its military in 2025, followed by Algeria on about 8.8 percent, Israel on 7.8 percent, Russia on 7.5 percent and Saudi Arabia on 6.5 percent. Absolute spending tells you which country can buy the most, while spending as a share of the economy tells you which country is carrying the heaviest burden, and the two rankings rarely agree.

The United States, despite the largest absolute budget in the world, spends a far smaller share of its output, a distinction our biggest companies by market value coverage frames through the scale of the American economy.

A different ranking: measured against the economy, Ukraine, Algeria, Israel, Russia and Saudi Arabia carry the heaviest military burdens, not the largest spenders.

Israel spending nearly eight percent of national output on defence is among the highest sustained rates of any developed economy, and it rose sharply after 2023 as regional conflict widened. Sustained defence spending near eight percent of output constrains everything else a government can do, which is why the share-of-GDP measure matters more for understanding strain than the headline dollar figure.

Iran and Israel Compared

The financial gap between the two sides is wide. SIPRI recorded Israeli military spending at about 45.3 billion dollars in 2024, up from 23.2 billion in 2021, while Iranian spending fell to about 6.6 billion in 2024 from 7.4 billion the year before. The financial asymmetry between Iran and Israel is one of the defining features of this conflict, though it explains far less about the fighting than the raw figures suggest.

Iranian figures are widely treated as understated, since parts of the Revolutionary Guard budget, the nuclear programme and support for allied forces sit outside the published defence line, so the published number understates the real one by a margin nobody can pin down precisely.

A widening gap: Israeli military spending nearly doubled between 2021 and 2024 while Iranian spending fell, on SIPRI figures.

Analysts commonly estimate real Iranian expenditure at two to three times the official figure. Even at the upper end it remains a fraction of Israeli spending, and a rounding error against the American budget. The gap between official and estimated Iranian spending is a reminder that comparing military budgets across very different political systems is an exercise in approximation rather than measurement.

How Do the Armed Forces Compare?

Manpower runs the other way. Iran fields roughly 610,000 to 650,000 active personnel against about 170,000 to 178,000 in Israel, a ratio of close to four to one, while the United States maintains about 1.3 million. Personnel counts are the oldest way of comparing armies and among the least useful, particularly in a war conducted overwhelmingly from the air and by missile. Iran fields roughly 610,000 to 650,000 active personnel, Israel about 170,000 to 178,000 and the United States about 1.3 million, with Iran holding a numerical advantage of close to four to one over Israel.

Raw headcount is a poor guide to capability, since equipment, readiness and air power matter more in a campaign fought largely from the air, a caution our AI and technology in finance coverage echoes about relying on single metrics.

Iran leads on numbers: Iran fields roughly four times the active personnel of Israel, though the United States maintains about 1.3 million.

On the Global Firepower index the United States ranks first, Israel around seventeenth and Iran around eighteenth, a ranking that understates Iranian capability inside its own region and overstates its ability to project force beyond it. Composite power rankings compress dozens of incommensurable measures into one number, and while useful as a rough guide they should never be the basis of a serious assessment.

What Has the War Cost?

The Pentagon told Congress on March 11, 2026 that the first six days of Operation Epic Fury had cost about 11.3 billion dollars, or roughly 1.9 billion dollars a day. Reported American equipment losses stood at about 5.14 billion dollars. The cost of the campaign to the United States became a political question almost immediately, and the figures the Pentagon reported to Congress were considerably higher than early estimates. The reported cost of 11.3 billion dollars over six days works out at roughly 1.9 billion dollars a day, against American equipment losses reported at about 5.14 billion dollars over the campaign.

Costs at that pace reshape defence budgets quickly, and SIPRI projected American spending would cross one trillion dollars in 2026 once war supplementals were counted, a shift our investment banking revenue coverage frames through the markets that finance it.

The campaign involved about 40,000 troops, multiple carrier strike groups and B-2 bombers flying thirty-hour missions from Missouri, the largest American deployment in the region since 2003. The scale of the deployment, the largest in the region in more than two decades, is the clearest indication of how the conflict was understood by American planners at the outset.

The Nuclear Question

Nuclear capability sits at the centre of the conflict. Israel is assessed to hold about 90 nuclear warheads and Iran holds none, though the International Atomic Energy Agency documented Iranian enrichment to 60 percent uranium-235 in early 2026. The nuclear question is what separates this conflict from other regional wars, and it is also the area where verified public data is thinnest.

Sixty percent enrichment is short of the roughly 90 percent regarded as weapons grade but far above any civilian requirement, which is the technical fact underlying the strikes on Fordow and Natanz.

The remaining scope of the Iranian programme after the strikes is unresolved and formed a central subject of the negotiations that followed, so any figure published today should be read as provisional. Because the post-strike state of the Iranian nuclear programme is unresolved and politically contested, it is the single area of this topic where published figures should carry the heaviest caveats.

How Did Markets React?

Markets absorbed the shock unevenly. Energy prices moved first and hardest, while broader equity indices proved more resilient than in previous Middle East conflicts, helped by lower American dependence on Gulf oil. How financial markets absorbed the conflict is a useful measure of how the world economy has changed, since a comparable shock two decades ago would have moved prices far more violently.

Risk assets tend to move together in a crisis, a correlation our crypto market and Nasdaq stock market coverage tracks through periods of stress.

Equities finally reacted in late July. On July 23 the Dow fell about 550 points, the S&P 500 lost 1.4 percent and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 2.5 percent, while the ten-year Treasury yield reached its highest level since January 2025, a rotation visible in the asset mix our asset manager allocation coverage follows and the underwriting our leading investment banks coverage records. The muted equity response relative to energy markets suggests investors treated the conflict as a supply shock rather than a systemic one, at least through the first months.

The War in Numbers

A few figures frame the war. Iran reported more than 3,400 deaths by June 2026, Lebanon reported over 4,300 by July, oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz fell about 30 percent, and Brent crude rose roughly a third in ten days. These figures together map a war that is measurable in its economic effects and deeply contested in its human ones.

These figures matter because the conflict connects a regional war to global energy, food and freight costs, a transmission that reaches importers and households thousands of miles from the fighting.

Together they describe a war whose human cost is disputed and still being counted, and whose economic effects are measurable, immediate and felt well beyond the countries involved. For now, the statistical record of this war is incomplete by definition, and the most useful thing any summary can do is show its sources rather than smooth over the gaps between them.

Reading the Statistics of a Live War

Taken together, the statistics of the U.S.-Israel war with Iran describe an asymmetric conflict with a contested human toll and a clear economic signature, running through the single most important oil chokepoint in the world.

Every figure on this page will change. The honest way to read war statistics is to check who produced the number, when they produced it, and what they counted, which is why each figure here carries all three.

Frequently Asked Questions: The Iran War in Numbers