SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
minab school bombing
Vance Says US 'Never Targets Civilians'—But Data From First Phase of Iran War Tells a Different Story
During the war's first 40 days, 77% of US attacks involved damage to civilian infrastructure or harm to civilians.
Sep 04, 2026
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."
Keep ReadingShow Less
From Iraq to Gaza, We Are Failing in Our Debt to the Child
What heart refuses to protect and even worse, intentionally targets “the child” along with the people and institutions that provide the care and protection necessary to sustain the child’s life?
Aug 26, 2026
"Whereas mankind owes to the child the best it has to give…"—United Nations Declaration on the Rights of the Child, 1959
There were Iraqi children before Gaza, before Hind. Before Iran and the Minab School bombing. Iraqi children dying by the thousands, as many as 500,000 as a result of US-supported UN economic sanctions and wars in Iraq. Governments expressed “concern.” International scholars and lawyers called it a genocide. Former Secretary of State under Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright, called it a price worth paying.
Who are we; what universe is this where one writes again and again in support of children, of “the child” as if they were some political cause. It’s the new abnormal, where everyday brings news of children suffering, injured and dying, in Iraq, in Ukraine, and Sudan. In Gaza and the Occupied West Bank, in Iran and Lebanon to name a few.
The child is trapped in a car, shot dead; they are buried under the rubble of their bombed-out house, of their school or the hospital where they have just been born. They’re wounded, missing eyes, arms, and legs; missing parents and siblings, aunts and uncles.They’re missing all the little as well as the significant “stuff” that is, that should be, a child's life. They’re sick and there are no doctors or medicines; they’re hungry and there’s no food or clean water. There’s no school, no mosque, no church, and no more neighborhood. Out of a house, in a tent or on the street, forcibly moved from here to there. What sort of world is this, what kind of culture. What heart refuses to protect and even worse, intentionally targets “the child” along with the people and institutions that provide the care and protection necessary to sustain the child’s life?
We know, everyone knows this is not the world “fit for Children” promised by global leaders at the UN some 30 years ago, yet it continues.
While instinct—some call it maternal—helps insure the future of a species, caring about and for one’s own offspring doesn’t necessarily translate to caring about all children. This enormous responsibility has been taken up by governments and international organizations; children need guaranteed special protections because they are “…innocent, vulnerable, and dependent.” The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC, 1990), the most widely endorsed human rights document in history, committed world leaders to giving children the “first call” on human and financial resources and know-how to address critical issues such as: poverty, education, child and maternal health, and protection during armed conflicts. With great fanfare, they reaffirmed these aspirations, calling for a world “fit” for children in 2002 at the UN Special Session on Children, the largest ever gathering for a UN Special Session.
The disconnect of words to actions and to the actual situation for children in 2002, as the Special Session convened, was not lost on those of us who cared about Iraq and Iraqi children. An estimated half million had died. The alarming increase in birth defects and childhood cancers was stressing a medical system under siege. The overall health of Iraqi children as measured by the Under 5 Mortality Rate (U5MR) “…the single most significant indicator of the state of a nation’s children…” had declined by 160% in the decade since the CRC. It was the largest decline in well-being by far for children in any country in the world. And this, like the overall destruction of Iraq and Iraqi society was brought on by war and sustained by the severe US-supported UN economic sanctions imposed by the very agency pledging to take responsibility for the world’s children.
International law failed to protect Iraqi children; it has failed Palestinian children for decades despite their well-documented fragility under Israeli occupation. And now, we watch as the already precarious “child” in Gaza and the Occupied West Bank suffers unimaginable atrocities.“Atrocity in the ordinary sense of the term, as evoking simply the shock and horror that most would feel in the face of such enormous and gratuitous human damage; a circumstance in which we would be hard-pressed not to disparage the justifications” (Joy Gordon, Invisible War: The United States and the Iraq Sanctions, 2010).
UN and human rights organizations wring their hands and issue condemnations. Some do not call this a genocide. The majority that might help to end this catastrophe has stood by—including women, mothers, and global health and human rights organizations—and watched the occupation and genocide kill and maim thousands and thousands of Palestinian children and their extended families. Watched as the very country is rendered uninhabitable. Stood silently by as the very ones seeking to protect Palestinian children are treated and prosecuted as terrorists.
The moving promises of UN declarations and their aspirations on behalf of children have come to nothing. We’re being subjected to a form of global violence Joy Gordon warned about, that of "a single nation," or in today’s world, two nations—the US and Israel—"hijacking an institution of international governance, substituting their own agenda in place of the interests and will of the international community.” This should not stand.
According to the Ministry of Health, 73,386 Palestinians—including 21,000 children—were killed in the Gaza Strip and another 174,256 were injured between October 7, 2023 and August 9, 2026. This includes 1,258 fatalities and 4,295 injuries between the announcement of a ceasefire agreement on October 10, 2025 and August 9, 2026. We know, everyone knows this is not the world “fit for Children” promised by global leaders at the UN some 30 years ago, yet it continues. I’m at a loss. What can be said that hasn’t been said, or written that hasn’t been written. What poem or investigative article, what personal narrative could possibly bring an end to this carnage.
In 1915 Henry James declared, “The war has used up words, they have weakened, they have deteriorated…” Dr. Salma Al-Hadad, head of the pediatric oncology unit at Children’s Welfare Teaching Hospital in Baghdad since 1992, shared his view. After years of interviews revealing the struggles to save increasing numbers of patients with increasingly difficult cancers without even the most basic medicines and technology, she went silent. “The very hard times I’ve experienced over these years,” she wrote sometime in a mid-2000 email, “have rendered me silent. I find no comment.”
The moral universe owes a deep debt to the people of Palestine who have not gone silent, or ceased to document the atrocities against them. They pay for this every day with their lives, and in many cases the lives of other family members. I urge myself on. We have to repay that debt by breaking the silence even when we feel there is nothing more to say. Silence cannot be an option for those who are suffering under the weight of the atrocities being committed against children.
"All people,” wrote Leo Tolstoy, “live, Not by reason of any care they have for themselves, But by the love for them that is in other people.” If we truly care about “the child,” we have to increase our efforts on their behalf.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'An Abomination': House Dem Revives Hegseth Impeachment Push After Iran School Massacre Revelation
"Children were murdered in the first days of Trump’s illegal, pointless war that has wreaked havoc across the world," said Rep. Yassamin Ansari.
Jul 08, 2026
The House Democrat who introduced articles of impeachment against Pentagon Secretary Pete Hegseth earlier this year revived her call for his removal on Wednesday following news that top US military commanders bypassed warnings about the reliability of their targeting information before authorizing the bombing of an Iranian school, killing more than 150 people—mostly young children.
"This is unconscionable," Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-Ariz.), one of two Iranian Americans in Congress, wrote on social media in response to CNN's reporting on the US commanders' catastrophic decision. "Children were murdered in the first days of [President Donald] Trump’s illegal, pointless war that has wreaked havoc across the world. It is an abomination. It is a war crime. And it is why I’ve introduced articles of impeachment against Pete Hegseth."
Ansari urged her colleagues to support the Hegseth impeachment articles, which state that the Pentagon chief "has authorized, condoned, or failed to prevent the use of military force in a manner inconsistent with the law of armed conflict" and "demonstrated a willful disregard for the Constitution," among other alleged violations.
Currently, just 16 House Democrats are listed as co-sponsors of Ansari's impeachment articles against Hegseth, who dismantled the Pentagon's civilian harm mitigation programs before the Trump administration attacked Iran in late February. According to ProPublica, "Hegseth made deep cuts to the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response programs and slashed CHMR staff at military commands by more than 90%."
"That included removing civilian harm specialists from target development strike teams and reducing the team of 10 at Central Command to only one full-time staffer," the outlet added.
CNN reported on Tuesday that senior US military commanders ignored warnings that intelligence pertaining to possible targets in Iran "was severely out of date and approved some strikes"—including the bombing of Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School in Minab, an attack that human rights groups say should be investigated as a war crime.
Months later, the Pentagon has not publicly released the findings of its investigation into the strike, and Trump recently said he doesn't believe the US was responsible for the Minab school attack, despite now-abundant evidence to the contrary. The attack is seen as one of the worst massacres of civilians in recent US military history.
Last week, The Associated Press reported that when news of the school bombing emerged on the first day of the US-Israeli assault on Iran, "the US military knew they had conducted strikes in the vicinity—though it took the military time to verify the Iranian claims that a school was struck and begin a formal investigation."
"One former Pentagon official, similarly speaking on condition of anonymity, said the bombing came as a natural result of changes made by the Trump administration to reduce staff to mitigate civilian harm and Hegseth’s emphasis on lethality," the outlet noted. "When Hegseth took charge, he slashed the size of an office called the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence, created at the direction of Congress in late 2022. That stopped the office’s work on updating 'no-strike lists,' which are lists of protected sites such as hospitals, schools, churches, and mosques, that the Pentagon keeps."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'I Don't Think It Was Us,' Trump Says of Iran School Massacre as Cover-Up Fears Grow
"It’s been four months since the deadliest US airstrike against civilians in recent memory, yet we are no closer to getting answers," said Amnesty International USA.
Jun 25, 2026
President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he doesn't believe the US military was responsible for the missile strike that massacred more than 100 schoolchildren in Iran in late February, contradicting the Pentagon's reported conclusions, the findings of outside analysts, and physical evidence from the scene.
"I don't think it was us," Trump told reporters gathered in the Oval Office. The president did not offer a shred of evidence to support his view and said he has not seen the Pentagon's findings, which have reportedly been finalized amid mounting fears of a cover-up attempt.
"It’s horrible what happened, but there were missiles flying all over the place," Trump claimed. The Pentagon's preliminary findings indicate that the US struck the elementary school in Minab, Iran with a Tomahawk missile while attacking "an adjacent Iranian base of which the school building was formerly a part," The New York Times reported in March.
Pentagon Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday that "we've taken the investigation very seriously" and that the findings would be released at the "appropriate time."
Watch:
Reporter: Have you seen the report into the Minab school attack, sir?
Trump: I have not seen it. I have to wait for it to be complete. I don’t know that they’re ever going to solve that problem. I don’t know that they’re ever going to say it was one of our missiles. Pete, I… pic.twitter.com/0csB46qL8d
— Acyn (@Acyn) June 24, 2026
Trump's latest remarks came days after he brushed aside persistent concerns about the deadly strike, saying the incident occurred "a long time ago" and that "nobody did that on purpose."
"Mistakes are made," added Trump, who initially tried to blame Iran for the Minab massacre. "War is nasty. But I know it’s under investigation."
Amnesty International USA lamented in a statement Thursday that "it’s been four months since the deadliest US airstrike against civilians in recent memory, yet we are no closer to getting answers from US authorities about why this happened and who was responsible."
"The Pentagon must urgently finish its investigation and publicly release the findings. The investigation must consider the military’s intelligence gathering and assessments, as well as targeting decisions, precautions taken, and its use of artificial intelligence. Where sufficient evidence exists, competent authorities must prosecute any person suspected of criminal responsibility," said Amanda Klasing, the group's national director for government relations and advocacy.
"Anything less," she added, "would amount to a cover-up of a serious breach of international humanitarian law and a betrayal of the victims and survivors of this horrific attack."
NBC News reported earlier this week that "there is growing concern in Congress and the Pentagon that the Trump administration will classify and shield" the results of its investigation from the public.
“Of course they are going to try to classify the report," said Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), who sits on committees with jurisdiction over the Pentagon.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Mistakes Are Made': Trump Rejects Accountability for US Massacre at Iran Girls' School
"War is nasty," the president said when asked about the February cruise missile strike that killed 156 students and staff in Minab, continuing the centuries-old presidential tradition of dismissing American atrocities.
Jun 18, 2026
President Donald Trump on Wednesday joined a long line of US leaders to brush off atrocities committed by American forces when he dodged questions about responsibility for the February cruise missile strike on an Iranian girls school that massacred students and staff.
On February 28—the first day of the illegal US-Israeli war of choice on Iran—a US strike on the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school in Minab killed 156 people, at least 120 of them children, and wounded 95 others.
Satellite imagery analyses confirmed eyewitness accounts that the attack was a “triple-tap” airstrike, in which an initial bombing was followed up with two additional strikes meant to kill survivors and rescue workers.
Asked by a journalist at the G7 meeting in France if anyone would be held accountable for the bombing, Trump replied, "It's such a strange question to be asked at this date, because you're talking about a long time ago."
"Nobody did that on purpose," Trump said of the school strike. "Mistakes are made. War is nasty. But I know it's under investigation."
"I would ask Pete Hegseth," the president added, referring to his defense secretary, who said at the war's start that US forces would not be bound by “stupid rules of engagement” and would instead prioritize “lethality.”
Fragments of a Tomahawk cruise missile found at the school and marked with the names of US weapons companies, a Pentagon contract number, and “Made in USA” added to the body of evidence pointing to the United States as the perpetrator of what numerous experts called a likely war crime.
Trump first claimed that Iran bombed the school, and when it was revealed that a Tomahawk missile was used in the strike, he risibly asserted that Tehran had such highly restricted US missiles in its arsenal. The US has not sold weaponry to the Iranian government since the 1970s, with the extraordinary exception of during the Iran-Contra Affair, in which the Reagan administration secretly sold arms to Iran in the 1980s to fund anti-communist Contra terrorists in Nicaragua.
A preliminary Pentagon probe indicated US responsibility for the Minab massacre—and that the building was struck intentionally, raising questions about the possible use of artificial intelligence for targeting purposes. The US military has confirmed use of AI in the Iran War, which is being carried out in partnership with Israeli forces that have used artificial intelligence extensively in their genocidal assault on the Gaza Strip. More than 250,000 Palestinians have been killed or wounded—most of them civilians—since the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023.
Numerous investigative journalism outlets and rights groups—including Bellingcat, The New York Times, Sky News, NPR, The Associated Press, the BBC, Reuters, Al Jazeera, CNN, and Amnesty International—also investigated the attack and concluded the US was responsible.
Trump administration officials and Republican US lawmakers dismissed or stonewalled efforts by journalists, activists, and Democratic legislators to seek accountability for one of the deadliest US civilian massacres in modern times.
The Minab strike ranks up with the bombing of a Baghdad bomb shelter during the 1991 Gulf War—which killed more than 400 people, mostly women, children, and elders—and the March 2017 slaughter of at least 105 people in an apartment building in Mosul, Iraq during Trump’s first-term “war of annihilation” against the so-called Islamic State.
The school massacre also drew comparisons with the 1968 wholesale slaughter of 504 unarmed villagers, mostly women and children—at least some of them raped before being killed—by US troops at My Lai in Vietnam.
Trump joins a long line of US leaders who have ducked accountability for—or worse, tried to justify—atrocities committed on their watch.
Faced with what was then commonly called the "Indian problem," a young Virginia governor named Thomas Jefferson justified what he called "their extermination, or their removal," because "the same world would scarcely do for them and us.”
During the Civil War, Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, commander of an indiscriminate scorched-earth campaign during his March to the Sea, wrote that "war is cruelty, and you cannot refine it."
President Theodore Roosevelt attempted to defend US troops accused of mass murder and torture—including what's now known as waterboarding—during the Philippines War by shaming critics who condemned those crimes but turned blind eyes to the lynching of Black Americans in the South.
After ordering the only nuclear war in human history, against a defeated enemy making efforts to surrender, President Harry S. Truman said of his Japanese victims, "The only language they seem to understand is the one we have been using to bombard them."
After US forces killed hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotian civilians in the 1960s and 1970s, US Army Chief of Staff Gen. William Westmoreland attempted to rationalize the slaughter by explaining: "The Oriental doesn't put the same high price on life as does the Westerner... Life is cheap in the Orient."
As US-driven United Nations sanctions reportedly killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children in the 1990s, Madeleine Albright, President Bill Clinton's secretary of state, opined that "we think the price is worth it."
During President George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq, US Central Command chief Gen. Tommy Franks said, "We don't do body counts" when asked about the staggering number of civilian casualties, while Vice President Dick Cheney dismissed waterboarding as a mere "dunk in the water" amid a worldwide torture scandal.
When President Barack Obama's drone war killed an American teenager in Yemen, administration spokesperson Robert Gibbs deflected blame by arguing that the child should have had "a far more responsible father.”
As Trump loosened rules of engagement meant to protect civilians during his first-term campaign to "bomb the shit out of" Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria and "take out their families," his defense secretary, James "Mad Dog" Mattis, announced that the US was shifting from a policy of “attrition” to one of “annihilation."
“Civilian casualties are a fact of life in this sort of situation,” he said.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Iran Wants to Know If Anyone Told Kids in Trump's Oval Office About Minab Massacre
"Has anyone told these children that that bloodthirsty man killed more than 200 students just a few days ago?"
May 06, 2026
The day after US President Donald Trump told young children in the Oval Office about the blowing up of strategic targets in Iran and described the graphic killing of Iranian protesters who were shot in the head by alleged snipers, a social media account with Iran's foreign service on Wednesday inquired whether anyone had thought to mention the scores of students who were murdered earlier this year when US forces bombed a school in the city of Minab.
"Has anyone told these children that that bloodthirsty man killed more than 200 students just a few days ago?" asked the Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran in South Africa.
While the number of students killed in the Minab massacre—which took place on the very first day of US bombing—was put at "more than 100" by Amnesty International in a March report, the Iranian government has said 60 or more college students have been killed by US and Israeli forces during airstrikes on universities and research facilities since the attack ordered by Trump began on February 28.
Trump, during his remarks to the children and other gathered in the White House to mark a new physical fitness initiative by the White House, called the Iranians "sick people" who he absurdly claimed would have destroyed the entire Middle East, including Israel, with a nuclear weapon—which they don't have—"within two weeks" if the US had not attacked when they did.
Trump, with no sense of irony, told the children, "we're not going to let lunatics have a nuclear weapon." The optics of Trump's comments were not only seized by the Iranians to make a point about how the US military has conducted itself under his command.
"Trump unironically tells kids in America that Iran is full of 'sick people' who would've nuked them," said journalist Fiorella Isabella, "as the entire world with a half a brain reminds him that the very first thing he and his Zionist ghouls did was order a double tap-strike on 180 school children in Minab."
Keep ReadingShow Less
CBS Invited a War Criminal to Their Dinner Party
At the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, journalists like those at CBS should be demanding the answers of Pete Hegseth that he has refused to give to Congress.
Apr 24, 2026
CBS News is inviting Secretary of War Pete Hegseth to join them at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner this week—to sit at their table, surrounded by journalists he’s banned from Pentagon press conferences.
Many, including journalists who work at CBS, are calling this invitation distasteful, given Hegseth’s attacks on truth, the First Amendment, and journalism. However, given CBS’s hard pivot to the right after being absorbed into the Ellisons’ media sphere—and with warmonger Bari Weiss at the helm—maybe it’s just what makes sense for CBS. This is just one example of mainstream media not only refusing to ask questions of war criminals, but blatantly befriending them.
This move is particularly interesting given Hegseth’s last few months.
He oversaw and commanded the operation that kidnapped the head of state of another country when the US attacked Venezuela earlier this year. He also oversaw targeted strikes that extrajudicially killed Venezuelan fishermen under the auspices of drug smuggling. Just last month, he started the US war against Iran by using AI to target an elementary school in Minab, killing nearly 200 children in an instant. He’s been in lockstep with President Donald Trump in terms of genocidal rhetoric toward seemingly any country he wakes up hating that day. Now, the Hegseth War Department is reportedly planning a war on Cuba—a country 90 miles away from the United States that has done absolutely nothing to us except try to send emergency medical aid after Hurricane Katrina.
Yet the media keeps framing these threats as if he’s bluffing, as if he hasn’t ordered horrific military actions before, as if the blood of 168 little girls won’t still be dripping from his hands as they sit across from him at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
The Minab school bombing has seemingly stuck with people in terms of Hegseth’s brutality. Surely, the deliberate targeting of an elementary school is a war crime. Shortly after the bombing, members of Congress submitted a list of 10 questions for Hegseth to answer. It included questions about the use of artificial intelligence in target selection, what steps he took to mitigate civilian harm, and what coordination had been done with Israel. He was also asked what mitigation measures he would take in the future. March 20 was the deadline given to him by Congress, and the day came and went without a word from him.
If the attack in Minab that killed little girls and boys had been an accident, I imagine he could have answered those questions easily. That is one of his many war crimes, possibly one of his most blatant. But a person only needs to commit one war crime to be a war criminal; it just depends on who holds him accountable. If Congress couldn’t get answers to its questions, you would think outlets like CBS would be responsible for having him on their shows and demanding answers, as real journalists would. But instead, they invite him to dinner.
On top of the targeting of a school, Hegseth has also repeatedly—during a ceasefire and delicate negotiations—threatened to bomb Iran’s energy infrastructure. Intentionally attacking power plants or electric grids is a war crime under international law. If carried out as Trump and Hegseth have articulated, wiping out Iran’s power would mean millions of people could die in ways most people in the US can’t even imagine. Power in hospitals would go out, ventilators would shut down, and incubators would stop working. Food would spoil, and transportation—for the sick and injured—would fail. Their blood would be on Hegseth’s hands. Yet the media keeps framing these threats as if he’s bluffing, as if he hasn’t ordered horrific military actions before, as if the blood of 168 little girls won’t still be dripping from his hands as they sit across from him at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
At the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, journalists like those at CBS should be demanding answers he refused to give to Congress. With a war secretary who bans the press from his briefings, this might be their only chance to get them.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Parents of Iranian Kids Killed by US School Bombing Thank Pope Leo for Speaking Out Against War
"We write this letter to you with trembling hands and a heart full of pain, from amidst the ashes and ruins of the schools of the city of Minab."
Apr 20, 2026
Parents of children killed in the US bombing of an elementary school in southern Iran released a letter on Sunday applauding Pope Leo XIV for speaking out against war and urging him to "continue to be the voice of the voiceless children."
"We write this letter to you with trembling hands and a heart full of pain, from amidst the ashes and ruins of the schools of the city of Minab," reads the letter, first reported by Iran's PressTV. "We are the fathers and mothers of 168 children who, these days, instead of embracing the warm bodies of our children, press their burned bags and bloody notebooks to our chests; innocent children whose only crime was smiling in the classroom, but this crime, through the instigation and support of illogical warmongers, crashed down upon the heads of our innocent children."
More than 100 children were killed in the February 28 strike on Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school in Minab, along with teachers and parents. Preliminary findings from the Pentagon indicate that the US was responsible for the strike, though the Trump administration has not formally admitted fault or apologized for the deadly attack, which came on the first day of the illegal US-Israeli war on Iran. Human rights groups have said the bombing should be investigated as a war crime.
In recent weeks, Trump administration officials and US President Donald Trump himself have lashed out at Pope Leo for condemning the Iran war and the president's genocidal threat to wipe out Iranian civilization, which the pope called "truly unacceptable."
The pontiff has not backed down, saying last week that he "will continue to speak out strongly against war, seeking to promote peace, promoting dialogue and multilateralism among states to find solutions to problems."
In their letter on Sunday, the parents of children killed in the Minab school bombing wrote to Pope Leo that "you, with an aching heart and a divine perspective, warned the awakened consciences of the world that 'hate is increasing, violence is worsening, and many have lost their lives.'"
"Today, the empty chairs of the classrooms in Minab are bitter testaments to this very truth; a truth brought about by the making of American bombs directed by illogical warmongers," they continued. "We thank you that amidst the tumult of war, you became the voice of righteousness and reminded everyone that lasting peace and tranquility are achieved 'not through force and weapons, but through the path of dialogue and the genuine search for a solution for all.'"
NEW: The families of more than 100 school children killed in the U.S. bombing of an Iranian school have written a letter of gratitude to Pope Leo XIV.
In it, they thank him for being a champion of peace and a voice for their deceased children.
The White House has yet to… pic.twitter.com/KZKmNoYwwu
— Christopher Hale (@ChristopherHale) April 19, 2026
The letter came as Trump issued fresh threats to indiscriminately bomb Iran's civilian infrastructure, further endangering a fragile ceasefire and the prospect of a lasting diplomatic resolution to the conflict.
According to Iranian authorities, the US-Israeli war has killed more than 3,300 people in Iran—including hundreds of children. Abbas Masjedi, the head of the Iranian Legal Medicine Organization, told PressTV that 40% of the bodies of Iranian victims were "initially unidentifiable due to the type of bombs and missiles" used by the US and Israeli militaries.
Keep ReadingShow Less
US, Israel 'Going Gaza on Iran' as Death Toll Tops 500 Amid New Massacres
"This is carpet-bombing, which has struck everything from playgrounds, to an emergency services HQ, schools, media buildings, and medical facilities," said one observer.
Mar 02, 2026
US and Israeli forces were accused Monday of "seemingly indiscriminate" bombing of Iran as the country's Red Crescent said that at least 555 people have been killed amid reports of fresh mass casualty attacks across the country.
The Iranian Red Crescent Society said at least 555 people have been killed so far during three days of a US and Israeli war of choice aimed at toppling Iran's long-ruling Islamist government. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday continued to insist that the war is not about regime change, but rather enduring yet bogus claims that Iran is close to developing nuclear weapons.
Those killed include many civilians as well as former Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei and dozens of senior government and military officials. Iranian counterattacks have killed half a dozen US troops, 9 Israelis, and a handful of people in Gulf nations allied with the United States.
An attack on the Abbasabad Police Station—where anti-government protesters were allegedly tortured during the recent deadly crackdown—in Niloofar Square in central Tehran killed at least 20 people, local media reported.
"This is carpet-bombing, which has struck everything from playgrounds, to an emergency services HQ, schools, media buildings, and medical facilities," documentary filmmaker Robert Inlakesh said in a social media post showing the aftermath of the strike.
Local residents said that the site was attacked for the second time in three days. This was part of broader US-Israeli strikes on Tehran, including attacks on the Revolutionary Court, Defense Ministry, other government sites, and civilian infrastructure including at least eight medical facilities and state media outlets.
Carpet bombing in Iran is stark reminder of how air superiority shapes modern warfare. In May 2025, Pakistan faced similar escalation from India—yet credible air defense and a combat-ready air force altered strategic calculus decisively.
Invest in air power, instead of proxies! pic.twitter.com/H3rx2tYS7T
— Sarah Khan (@sarahkhanjourno) March 2, 2026
Video footage of another attack on central Tehran—this one in Ferdowsi Square—showed devastation from what political analyst Trita Parsi called "seemingly indiscriminate" bombing.
"Increasingly, Israel and the US appear to be following the Gaza playbook, having failed to achieve a quick regime implosion," Parsi said on social media.
Parsi also shared video of a distraught woman who described an apparent so-called "double-tap" strike, a common tactic used by the US, Israel, and other militaries in which an initial bombing is followed up with a second one in a bid to kill and injure survivors and first responders.
"They killed everyone," the woman said of the attackers. "They dropped the first bomb, then when people went to help, they dropped another bomb."
Local and international media reported at least 35 people killed in multiple attacks on targets in the southern Fars province, which neighbors Hormozgan province, where the deadliest massacre of the young war took place on Saturday. Officials said at least 175 people—mostly children—were killed in a strike on the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls' elementary school in Minab.
Several hours later, a missile strike on a gymnasium in Lamerd, Pars province, where dozens of teenage girls were playing sports reportedly killed at least 18 people.
"Like the destruction of the school in Minab, basic protections to safeguard the lives of civilians in war either failed or were disregarded, leading to catastrophic loss among Iran’s civilian population," the National Iranian American Council said in a statement Monday.
Iranian Red Crescent chief Pirhossein Kolivand said in a video posted on social media Sunday that “the Minab school incident has no comparison with any other incident, even in Gaza."
Comparisons with Gaza—where Israel's genocidal assault has left more than 250,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing since October 2023 and the coastal strip in ruins—have been numerous.
Condemning what it called the "barbarous" and "treacherous" US-Israeli attacks on Iran, Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based resistance group targeted by Israel during the Gaza war, said, “This aggression confirms the full and direct partnership between America and Israel in planning and execution, not only in the war against the Islamic Republic, but also in all the wars and crimes the region is facing, in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen.”
Ori Goldberg, an Israeli political analyst, said that, in Israeli society, "there’s a sense of triumphalism, of having attacked an enemy regime."
"Not really because we’re greatly invested in the future of the Iranian people, but because, through the genocide on Gaza, we’ve devalued human life,” he added.
Parsi said that "Israel appears to be going Gaza on Iran."
The renewed US and Israeli attacks on Iran follow last year's limited war on the country that left thousands of Iranians dead or wounded, including at least 436 civilians killed and over 2,000 others injured, according to officials and activists.
United Nations officials and international human rights defenders were also among those condemning the US-Israeli war of choice.
Addressing the Minab school strike, UNESCO—the UN's educational, scientific, and cultural agency—said that "the killing of pupils in a place dedicated to learning constitutes a grave violation of the protection afforded to schools under international humanitarian law."
UN Messenger of Peace and Nobel Peace laureate Malala Yousafzai asserted that “all states and parties must uphold their obligations under international law to protect civilians and safeguard schools," adding that "every child deserves to live and learn in peace.”
In the United States—where Democratic and a handful of Republican lawmakers are reportedly drafting a war powers resolution in a bid to rein in President Donald Trump's aggression—Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) took to social media to note the "over 555 Iranians already killed by US-Israeli bombs, including at least 165 at a girls' elementary school."
"At least four US service members are dead," she also wrote, before that figure rose to six. "Any member of Congress who votes against the war powers resolution is voting for more of this."
The Not Above the Law coalition was among the civil society groups urging Congress to pass an Iran war powers resolution.
“President Trump has launched deadly military strikes against Iran without congressional approval, in flagrant violation of the Constitution," the coalition's co-chairs said Monday. "Article I, Section 8 is crystal clear: Only Congress can declare war. Yet Trump has secured neither a declaration of war nor congressional authorization for military force."
"Trump’s reckless unilateral action puts American lives and global security at risk while trampling the foundational principle that no president is above the law," Not Above the Law added. “Congress must act immediately. Pass war powers resolutions to reject this unconstitutional power grab and reassert its authority over matters of war and peace. The rule of law demands it."
Keep ReadingShow Less
See More
Most Popular
To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good.
News & Opinion
Trending
Common Dreams, Inc. Founded 1997. Registered 501(c3) Non-Profit
Privacy Policy