U.S. military identifies 2 soldiers killed in Iranian attack on Jordan as from Texas and Hawaii

WASHINGTON — Two U.S. Army soldiers killed in Jordan while defending against Iranian ballistic missile and drone attacks were identified on Monday — the first U.S. troop deaths from direct Iranian fire since the opening days of the war.

The Defense Department said in a statement that James Feehan, 25, of Ewa Beach, Hawaii, and Isabella Gonzales, 19, of Carrollton, Texas, were killed in Jordan in Friday’s attacks.

Feehan, a first lieutenant, will be posthumously promoted to the rank of captain and awarded the Bronze Star, Purple Heart and Combat Action Badge medals.

The Army did not provide details about his commendations. He was assigned out of Ft. Bragg, N.C., to the 32nd Army Air Missile Defense Command.

Gonzales was a private with the 10th Army Air Missile Defense Command in Ansbach, Germany. She graduated last year from Hebron High School in Carrollton, near Dallas, school officials said.

“She gave her life in that service, and our district is heartbroken by her loss,” the Lewisville Independent School District said in a statement. “Her decision to serve after graduation speaks volumes of her character.”

The military said Gonzales died Friday and Feehan the following day. It did not provide details.

The deaths reflect the complicated reality that American soldiers don’t need to be on the ground in Iran to face lethal risks in a conflict that involves drones, missiles and airplanes. American forces are arrayed across the Middle East, making other nations targets of Iran as the fighting has escalated after a breakdown in peace talks.

President Trump, a Republican, has said the war is necessary to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Trump now faces political pressure to bring the war to a close and avoid the kind of prolonged Middle East conflict he had campaigned against.

An American service member was also killed in northern Iraq on Saturday during a “controlled detonation” of unexploded ordnance from a downed Iranian drone, U.S. Central Command said Sunday. A second service member was wounded and was receiving medical treatment for a minor injury.

The military said it was withholding additional information until 24 hours after families had been notified.

First fatalities came early in war

Shortly after the war began on Feb. 28, an Iranian drone strike at a civilian port in Kuwait killed six American soldiers. The soldiers were part of a supply and logistics unit based in Iowa who were working at a shipping container-style building that had no defenses.

A seventh soldier died more than a week after being wounded during a March 1 attack by Iran on the Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia.

Later in March, six service members were killed when a KC-135 refueling aircraft supporting U.S. military operations against Iran crashed in Iraq. The aircraft was in “friendly” airspace when an unspecified incident involving another aircraft took place, according to U.S. Central Command.

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On Monday, the U.S. military said a Navy pilot died in a helicopter crash in the Arabian Sea. The Navy initially described the July 1 crash as an emergency landing and said there was “no indication the emergency was caused by hostile action.” The remaining three sailors aboard the helicopter were rescued.

The deaths in the war are not limited to Americans.

Iranian authorities said at least 50 people have been killed and more than 500 wounded in U.S. strikes in the last three weeks, including eight killed in a strike on a bridge Friday.

People working on ships, as well as foreign workers and others in gulf nations, Israel and Lebanon have also died in the conflict.