Sarah: Trump orders a pause in the Hormuz strikes.
Sarah: Per Axios, CENTCOM had simply run out of targets; there was no breakthrough.
Sarah: New to this story? Here’s where things stand.
Sarah: Since July 20th the U.S.-Iran escalation has moved from threats to sustained action: the United States expanded its strikes on Iran
Sarah: Iran hit back and U.S.
Sarah: fatalities were confirmed in the region.
Sarah: As of our last edition, CENTCOM said the military had completed a twelfth straight night of strikes on Iran.
Rich: This is Iran War Daily.
Rich: Today — why the Pentagon quietly changed its casualty math, and the condition on Lebanon Khamenei just put on the table.
Sarah: Let’s start with Adm.
Sarah: Cooper’s explanation for the halt — the first account from a named source explaining why the strikes stopped.
Sarah: Ynet News writes:
Quote: The top U.S.
Quote: military commander in the Middle East recommended halting the bombing campaign around the Strait of Hormuz because it had reached the limit
Quote: of its effectiveness and most designated targets had already been exhausted
Quote: Axios reported Sunday.
Rich: Here’s what was buried in the Axios scoop: CENTCOM’s Adm.
Rich: Brad Cooper told Trump to stop because they’d run out of targets.
Rich: Iran hadn’t folded. The target list was empty.
Sarah: And that’s a different story from the one the White House told Friday.
Sarah: Trump framed the pause as a diplomatic opening; Cooper, per Axios, described a campaign that had hit its ceiling.
Sarah: I want to keep those two things separate.
Rich: After two weeks of strikes, the honest read is interceptor shortages and no targets left.
Rich: So here’s the obvious question: what exactly does a military that’s out of targets threaten next?
Sarah: After that roughly two-week Hormuz campaign, it’s CENTCOM’s senior commander — not the president — explaining why it stopped.
Sarah: Cooper says the campaign degraded Iran’s ability to hit shipping without eliminating it.
Sarah: From Anadolu Agency:
Quote: Mediators Pakistan and Qatar have intensified the exchange of messages between the US and Iran after the two warring sides communicated
Quote: their responses to a joint formula to end their months-long war
Quote: Pakistani government sources told Anadolu on Sunday.
Quote: The development came after US President Donald Trump ordered a "pause" in the latest bombing campaign on Iran after two weeks of consecutive
Quote: nights of strikes the sources added.
Sarah: Pakistani government sources tell Anadolu that Washington and Tehran have both responded to a joint Pakistan-Qatar formula for ending the
Sarah: war. So now we know who’s working the diplomatic channel: Islamabad and Doha.
Rich: Pakistan and Qatar — right after that Axios report said the halt came when CENTCOM ran out of targets.
Rich: Iran didn’t fold. The bombs stopped on their own, and now the mediators are stepping things up.
Sarah: Let’s keep the sequence clear, Rich.
Sarah: Anadolu says the diplomacy accelerated after Trump ordered the pause.
Sarah: The pause came first; the mediator surge followed.
Rich: And nobody’s shown me what’s actually in this joint formula.
Rich: “Exchanged responses” could mean two capitals merely agreed to keep talking.
Rich: A one-page proposal from two mediators doesn’t settle Hormuz, much less the nuclear issue or the hostages.
Sarah: From Steven Beynon at ABC News:
Quote: The Pentagon has updated its public-facing casualty database after abruptly revising its Iran war casualty figures last week
Quote: when it reduced the number of U.S.
Quote: troops listed as killed in Operation Epic Fury from 18 to 14 and removed dozens of wounded service members from that tally.
Sarah: Steven Beynon at ABC News reports that the Pentagon has updated its public casualty database.
Sarah: Last week, the killed-in-action count for Operation Epic Fury dropped from 18 to 14, and dozens more were pulled off the wounded rolls.
Rich: Four men un-died on paper.
Rich: The Pentagon didn’t return ABC’s request for comment.
Rich: That doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in the math.
Sarah: And now they’ve renamed the whole category — from Operation Epic Fury to the broader “Overseas Operations.” ABC says that effectively
Sarah: restarts the public count of the dead and wounded in this war.
Rich: Rename the folder, reset the tally.
Rich: DCAS is supposed to be the federal government’s authoritative record — and someone just quietly redefined what counts.
Rich: Who signed off, and when?
Sarah: No one’s explained that.
Sarah: The same day, we heard CENTCOM’s Cooper say the strikes stopped because targets ran out.
Sarah: So the operational story is winding down while the accounting behind it gets murkier, not clearer.
Rich: And remember the transfer case at Dover on the 22nd — First Lieutenant Tyler Feehan, of Ewa Beach, Hawaii.
Rich: Those flights don’t get recategorized.
Rich: The families know exactly which column they’re in.
Sarah: Al Jazeera writes:
Quote: Iran “has designated the preservation of Lebanon’s territorial integrity and the absolute
Quote: unconditional termination of the Zionist regime’s aggression as the primary condition for any agreement to ending the imposed war against
Quote: the aggressive US” he wrote.
Sarah: Per Al Jazeera, Khamenei said on X Sunday that there’d be no U.S.-Iran agreement unless Israel stops its attacks on Lebanon.
Sarah: He called that the primary condition — absolute and unconditional.
Sarah: Listen to what Tehran is doing here.
Sarah: It’s now welding the Lebanon front onto talks with Washington, on the record.
Sarah: This is the first time we’ve heard Tehran name a specific external precondition that way.
Rich: And just as Pakistan and Qatar step up their mediation, Khamenei drops a condition Washington physically can’t deliver.
Rich: Israel isn’t at that table.
Rich: Netanyahu just got handed a veto over a deal he isn’t signing.
Rich: Think about the sequencing.
Rich: The Hormuz strikes wound down because they ran out of targets, and now the price of peace is a ceasefire on a totally separate front.
Rich: Somehow, a one-page MOU is supposed to staple three wars together with one signature.
Sarah: From Richard Engel, Chantal Da Silva, Matthew Mulligan at NBC News:
Quote: President Donald Trump threatened a major new escalation and on Thursday told Axios he is weighing whether to launch a “massive attack” on
Quote: the Islamic Republic that would be “bigger than ever before.” The president’s warning and subsequent 13th night of military strikes came as
Quote: oil briefly surged above $100 a barrel.
Rich: Trump told Axios he’s weighing a strike “bigger than ever before” — and oil punched above a hundred bucks a barrel on the 13th straight
Rich: night.
Rich: That’s big talk for a campaign that, according to the CENTCOM report we just aired, was already scraping the bottom of its target list.
Sarah: Keep the dates straight, though.
Sarah: This is Trump on Thursday and Friday — “massive attack,” “take them apart piece by piece,” but also “we’re talking to them as we speak.”
Sarah: Both doors were open in the same breath.
Sarah: And here’s what triggered this round: NBC’s Engel says Tehran opened a second front in the Red Sea with the Houthi attack.
Sarah: So Trump is vowing to retaliate against Iran through Yemen.
Rich: Right — so “bigger than ever” meets Cooper telling the president to stop.
Rich: The threat and the after-action don’t match, and anyone paying for hundred-dollar oil doesn’t care which one is real.
Host: If Iran War Daily helps you stay informed, subscribe and leave a review wherever you’re listening.
Host: It helps more people find the show.
Host: You’ll find links to every story in today’s briefing in the show notes if you want to dig deeper.
Host: That’s Iran War Daily for Monday, July 27.
Host: This is a Lantern Podcast.