Grieving husband confronts Vance over wife's death in Iran war

At a CBS News town hall on Saturday night, a man whose wife was among the first American soldiers killed in the war with Iran confronted Vice President JD Vance over what he called the "fundamental failures" that led up to her death. Joey Amor's late wife, Sergeant First Class Nicole Amor, was 39 and one of six soldiers of the 103rd Sustainment Command killed by an Iranian drone strike in Kuwait at the start of Operation Epic Fury, the war the United States launched against Iran under President Trump.

"Though the Iranian drone was the weapon that killed my wife, there were a lot of mistakes and a lot of fundamental failures that led up to that," Amor told the vice president. His wife had told him things before she passed, he said, and there were other soldiers "being quiet about certain aspects of this." He asked how the administration was going to start holding leaders accountable for the actions and deaths of soldiers. "There's a failure in the leadership," he said.

Vance's reply has drawn the most attention. "This literally is the first time I've heard of this," the vice president said, before allowing that "there were issues with where troops were located that we realized were a huge mistake" and that these had since been changed. He declined to give details: "God forbid, I don't want the Iranians to learn something else that they're going to use to target somebody else's wife or somebody else's mother."

The exchange came seven months into a war the White House initially insisted would last only "days" or "weeks." Military analysts have long complained that the Pentagon inadequately accounted for Iran's response after the opening bombing campaign, and reports describe deployed troops and their families fearing that service members in the region are "sitting ducks," alongside fears that the White House lacks a strategy or an end goal. Critics described Vance's answer as robotic and distant, and asked how the administration's second-in-command could be encountering the circumstances of the war's first deaths for the first time more than half a year in.

Addressing a separate question about Abdul El-Sayed's criticism of decisions made by the president and the military, Vance offered a shorter reply: "Fundamentally, we are where we are."