Since President Donald Trump launched the war against Iran, the conflict has spiraled out of control, resulting in attacks throughout the Middle East, growing numbers of military and civilian casualties, and an energy crisis that threatens to upend the entire global economy. Two weeks ago, Trump was saying the war was “very complete,” but as of today, it is being reported that the Strait of Hormuz could remain closed for months and that the U.S. is sending thousands of troops to the region — not exactly signs that the situation is drawing down.
Consequently, the Trump Administration has been flailing to justify the war.
Early on, these attempts included the release of a document listing Iranian attacks against Americans, in which it was claimed that Trump’s war is an endeavor to “eliminate the threat once and for all.” But after digging by independent journalist Stephen McIntyre, it appears that list was “plagiarized” directly from a 2025 document published by an Israeli think tank on the eve of the U.S. bombing of Iran last June.
The White House document lists 992 American deaths spanning 44 incidents while providing no source for the information. But a side-by-side comparison with a list prepared by former AIPAC employee Tzvi Kahn and published by the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD) — the mission statement of which says it was founded to "provide education to enhance Israel's image in North America” — reveals that the two documents are “virtually identical,” with slight changes seemingly made with the intention of “ratcheting up the underlying allegation.”
For example, while the dates, assertions, and often wording included are nearly identical between the two documents, the White House version will sometimes attempt to emphasize Iran’s involvement by inserting the phrase “Iran-backed” into attacks committed by proxies like Hamas or Hezbollah.
Arguably the biggest difference between the two documents involved 9/11 and the subsequent war in Iraq. In the FDD version, one point attempts to draw unsubstantiated parallels between the 9/11 hijackers and Iran. While the White House list removed this entry, it added one attributing some 603 military deaths in Iraq to “Iran-backed militias,” “the largest single item (by far) in the entire list, accounting for 60% of the total attributed deaths.” And as McIntyre points out, that attribution was never reported by the State Department and has been “vigorously disputed” by experts. What’s more, in both documents, only a single death was directly attributed to Iran rather than its proxies, and some of the deaths listed were never officially attributed to any attacker at all.
The White House document may be intended to provide hard facts to justify the war, but as McIntyre concluded, “the reporting didn't come from an intelligence assessment,” but from Israeli assets.
