Vance Says US 'Never Targets Civilians'—But Data From First Phase of Iran War Tells a Different Story

Following the US bombing of a wedding party in Iran earlier this week that killed at least five people—including two children—and left dozens more wounded, Trump administration officials repeated the mantra that the US military "never targets civilians."

In the days since the strike in the small southern town of Kuhestak, an analysis by Reuters found that the bombing was likely a direct hit by a US munition.

During a White House press briefing on Thursday following the report, Vice President JD Vance said the US was investigating the attack: “We’re investigating it because obviously we care," he said. "We want to know."

But, questioned about US responsibility, he reiterated: "What I can say with 100% confidence is that unlike the [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps], the United States never targets civilians in combat. We never will do that. We never have done that. And unfortunately, obviously, sometimes things happen."

He added: "And if we do make mistakes, again, this is a big difference between us and Iran. When our military makes mistakes, they learn from them to try to get better from them. So we’re investigating it very fully.”

The comments raised eyebrows immediately: The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) has documented that between February 28, when President Donald Trump launched the war, and April 7, when a ceasefire agreement was reached, at least 1,701 civilians were killed, including at least 307 children, and 714 more people have been killed who could not be classified as either military or civilians.

The first phase of the war brought several examples of mass civilian casualty events, including the double-tap bombing of an elementary school in Minab on the war's first day, which killed at least 150 children and teachers, and precision missile strikes on a sports hall and surrounding residential areas in Lamerd, which killed at least 21 civilians, including at least seven children.

Trump administration officials have brushed these attacks off as unfortunate mistakes and denied allegations that civilians were being targeted.

In the case of Minab, the administration has still never formally accepted responsibility, although an internal Pentagon assessment concluded that US forces were "likely" responsible, and several independent investigations have presented evidence demonstrating US responsibility.

But while intent remains an open question about these specific incidents, data from the first phase of the war show that the overwhelming bulk of incidents involved the targeting of nonmilitary infrastructure.

A May investigation by HRANA found that over the war's first 40 days, 77% of the 6,324 verified incidents it documented involved either civilian harm or damage to civilian objects. This included:

• 108 educational facilities;
• 50 healthcare facilities;
• 122 cultural and religious sites;
• 381 industrial and commercial facilities;
• 173 electricity generation and distribution sites; and
• 191 judicial and law enforcement facilities.

The group pointed to "several patterns that raise serious concerns under international humanitarian law," including "apparent failures in target verification, use of artificial intelligence with minimal human oversight, inadequate and inaccessible warnings, the use of large explosive weapons in populated areas, repeated or 'double-tap' strikes, [and] attacks targeting widespread civilian infrastructure."

During that same period, Iranian attacks across Israel and US-allied nations in the Middle East killed at least 36 civilians, according to a country-by-country tally from Reuters on April 7, with additional fatalities in Gulf countries whose civilian or military status is not always specified.

Trump has regularly made threats to rain down mass destruction upon Iran, including threatening that "a whole civilization will die" while promising to destroy "every" bridge and power plant in the country.

Wes J. Bryant, who served as the Pentagon’s chief of civilian harm assessments and now works as a war crimes analyst, rejected the Trump administration's contention that civilian casualties in the war have been the result of mere mistakes, saying they were instead the result of US forces "recklessly and negligently endangering and killing civilians."

"Is the US intentionally targeting civilians in Iran?" Bryant told Al Jazeera. "It is."

"I can tell you from experience, every single target location is recorded at multiple levels throughout the chain of command," he said, adding that in this week's wedding attack and others like the attack on the Minab school, the military would have been able “to report within hours” if a school or wedding was struck.

The anti-war activist group CodePink noted that the bombing of weddings by US forces long predates this week's attack, citing at least 10 other cases since 2001 in which wedding parties have been bombed, leading to dozens of casualties in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen.

Pointing out that the wedding attack used three Boeing-produced missiles that the company markets as the "most accurate" in the US Navy's arsenal, Danaka Katovich, the national codirector of CodePink, said, "The Trump administration did not do this by accident."

"Even if they say they're 'investigating that'... like they did with the Minab school bombing, they are in a desperate situation," she said. "They are not winning the war, and they are running out of munitions, and they have no public support. They are resorting to tactics that attempt to inflict mass civilian harm."