Federal courts have held Iran liable for killing and maiming U.S. soldiers in Iraq with sophisticated weapons supplied through the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, yet Tehran has never paid a dime, and the families who lost everything say Washington has failed them too.
Nearly two decades before the current military confrontation with Iran, a weapon known as an explosively formed penetrator tore through a U.S. Army armored Humvee on a Baghdad road called Route Pluto. The date was May 3, 2005. Staff Sgt. William Brooks died. Sgt. Robert Bartlett, the driver, survived, barely. Two other soldiers in the vehicle were wounded. The weapon that did it was not a crude roadside bomb cobbled together by insurgents. It was a precision-engineered device that U.S. intelligence would later trace back to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Bartlett, now retired, described the moment to Fox News Digital in terms that leave nothing to the imagination:
"It cut me in half from my temple down through my jaw, and then took my gunner's legs off, and then took the top of my truck commander's head off."
An Army casualty report classified Bartlett as "very seriously injured," a clinical phrase that barely captures what happened. Bartlett says he flatlined three times. He spent four years at Walter Reed Army Medical Center undergoing surgeries, reconstruction, and rebuilding. His buddy, Brooks, never came home at all.
Brooks and Bartlett were not isolated cases. The same pattern, Iranian-supplied weapons, Iranian-trained proxy fighters, American casualties, repeated itself across Baghdad for years. Federal court findings would eventually document a systematic campaign run through the IRGC and its elite Quds Force, which the U.S. Treasury Department has described as "Iran's main instrument for supporting militant groups to advance the regime's national interests."
On December 3, 2006, Capt. Shawn English was riding in a mixed American-Iraqi patrol heading north through Baghdad when an EFP struck the right side of his vehicle. An Army investigation found that English was evacuated to a combat support hospital, where he died from his wounds. He had been serving on a military transition team working alongside Iraqi forces.
His widow, Tricia English, told Fox News Digital that her husband had warned her about the weapons during a period of leave shortly before the attack.
"He told me that there were these weapons, specifically called them EFPs, that they had discovered. They knew where they were coming from, and it was really bad."
She added, simply: "He knew it was Iranian."
The last conscious message Capt. English conveyed, as Tricia was later told, was five words: "Tell Trish and the boys that I love them."
The third attack came on April 6, 2008, when a rocket slammed into the roof of a gym inside a U.S. base in Baghdad's International Zone at approximately 3:28 p.m. Maj. Stuart Wolfer, 36, a father of three young daughters, had gone to exercise with a friend. When the incoming-fire warning sounded, he dropped to the floor. He and Col. Stephen Scott were almost directly beneath the point of impact. Shrapnel tore through the building. Wolfer was rushed to a combat support hospital and pronounced dead. Scott suffered severe injuries. The killing of American service members at the hands of Iranian-backed forces was not a new phenomenon even then, it was an established pattern.
Wolfer's sister, Beverly Wolfer Nerenberg, told Fox News Digital that her family was informed the rocket came from the direction of Sadr City, a Shiite militia stronghold in Baghdad, and that it was Iranian.
Nerenberg described her brother as her best friend. He had served as her "man of honor" at her wedding. Eighteen years after his death, the grief has not softened.
"Sorry, even 18 years later, it doesn't get easier to talk about."
She spoke about Wolfer's daughters, who have grown up without their father. "I'm beyond grateful and proud of my nieces and how they've grown up," she said. "But it's really hard to only have memories."
Nerenberg framed the current conflict with Iran not as something new but as a continuation of what her family has lived with for nearly two decades. "This war began a long time ago," she said. "For many of us, the past 18 years has been one long continuous war." That observation carries particular weight as the United States has recently expanded military strikes against Iranian targets following renewed provocations.
Bartlett, the English family, the Wolfer family, and hundreds of other American victims eventually brought their cases to federal court under the terrorism exception to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, a law that allows certain American victims to sue designated state sponsors of terrorism. The cases proceeded as default judgments because Iran generally refused to show up and defend itself.
That did not mean the courts rubber-stamped the claims. Judges still required plaintiffs to produce evidence demonstrating that Iran's material support was a substantial factor in each attack. The courts found that Iran, acting through the IRGC and its Quds Force, supplied Shiite militia groups with funding, training, weapons, and technical assistance used to target Americans. The litigation also examined Iranian support for Sunni terrorist organizations operating in Iraq.
The judgments were entered. Iran was held liable. And Iran has not voluntarily paid a single dollar.
Plaintiffs continue to face significant obstacles collecting the money they were awarded. For families who buried their loved ones and then spent years in courtrooms proving what happened, the outcome amounts to a legal victory with no practical consequence. The broader scope of Iran's hostile actions against the United States, including suspected cyberattacks on American water systems, only underscores how little accountability Tehran has faced.
Tricia English attended the court proceedings in her husband's case and said the experience was both necessary and devastating. She learned details about the attack she had never known.
"Sitting in the courtroom, I then got so much more information about what really happened and what this really looked like. That was traumatizing. But he deserved it. I needed to stand up for him."
She pointed to the sophistication of the Iranian operation. "We weren't at war with Iran," she said. "To have such a sophisticated, targeted, supported, funded (operation), it was so sophisticated. I think it's important for Americans to see that." The U.S. military's recent strikes on more than 80 Iranian targets reflect the kind of direct response these families waited years to see.
Her sharpest criticism was reserved not for the enemy but for Washington. Successive administrations, she said, have invoked Iran's record without following through.
"Shawn did his job every single time his country asked him to do it, regardless of who was in power. It's been a little disheartening to watch our country, various administrations, people in power, not do theirs when it comes to this."
Bartlett explained that he did not know what hit him at the time of the blast. "When you're blown up, you don't know what's hit you," he said. "You get the information after, when the intelligence reports come down and command lets you know what you got hit by." What command told him was that the weapon was an Iranian-supplied EFP linked to the IRGC.
He carries the weight of survival with a clarity that borders on obligation. "My buddy died, and plenty of my guys, plenty of people, died over there at the hands of the IRGC," he said. The diplomatic back-and-forth between Washington and Tehran, including moments when planned strikes were called off, has done little to ease the frustration of veterans who lived through the consequences of Iran's proxy campaign.
Bartlett framed his public advocacy as a matter of faith and duty to those who did not make it home:
"If I was sent back, if I died and saw the other side and came back, and I'm not doing right by them and their families who didn't get to have their child come home, then I'm not doing justice. I'm not living my faith, and I'm not living what I fought to protect, which is the truth."
He added: "You can't add to truth and you can't take away from it. It just is what it is."
Iran built the weapons. Iran trained the fighters. Iran directed the attacks. American courts proved it. And the families who paid the price are still waiting for someone in power to act like it matters.
