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After US-Israel Operation Kills 180 Girls in Iran, Melania Trump Chairs UN Session on Children in Conflict
"For the United States, ‘protecting children’ and ‘maintaining international peace and security’ clearly mean something very different from what the UN Charter provides,” said the Iranian ambassador to the UN.
Mar 03, 2026
As the families of an estimated 180 schoolchildren and staff members killed in an Israeli attack on a girls' school in southern Iran mourned on Monday, first lady Melania Trump presided over a United Nations Security Council meeting where the impact her husband's military operations in the Middle East was briefly addressed—but only in regard to the first lady's pet cause, children and technology.
Trump spoke generally about children living in or fleeing conflict as she opened a meeting on "Children, Technology, and Education in Conflict," saying the US "stands with all children throughout the world."
But the meeting was held as the US Department of Defense and Israeli officials refused to acknowledge what had been widely reported: On Saturday, as the US and Israel began launching airstrikes across Iran despite diplomatic talks that had recently been making progress, Israel struck the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls' school in Minab as children gathered there for the school day.
The building was destroyed and the roof collapsed, killing at least 180 people, according to PBS NewsHour correspondent Leila Molana-Allen—the majority of whom were girls between the ages of 7 and 12. Nearly 100 people were also injured.
An Al Jazeera investigation on Tuesday found that the strike—which the Trump administration and the Israel Defense Forces claimed they were unaware of—was likely a "deliberate" attack, based on satellite imagery compiled over more than 10 years, video clips, news reports, and official Iranian statements.
The outlet noted that the southeastern region where Minab is located is a hub for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps naval forces. The school that was hit was part of a broad network of institutions that educate the children of IRGC members.
The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor emphasized in a statement that "allegations regarding the presence of military facilities elsewhere in Hormozgan Province do not alter the school’s civilian character or justify targeting it."
"Any deliberate attack on a school or on civilians, as well as any indiscriminate or disproportionate attack that violates the principles of distinction and proportionality, constitutes a grave breach and may amount to a war crime where intent to target the school is established or where the attack is indiscriminate or disproportionate," said the group on Sunday. "The military attack on Iran constitutes an act of aggression and violates the UN Charter, which prohibits the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state."
The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) also said the bombing "constitutes a grave violation of the protection afforded to schools under international humanitarian law."
"Attacks against educational institutions endanger students and teachers and undermine the right to education," said the agency.
Ahead of the UN Security Council meeting led by the first lady, Iranian Ambassador to the UN Amir Saeid Iravani said it was "deeply shameful and hypocritical" for the US to convene a summit on protecting children in conflict as its joint strikes with Israel have killed close to 800 civilians across Iran in recent days.
“For the United States, ‘protecting children’ and ‘maintaining international peace and security’ clearly mean something very different from what the UN Charter provides,” said Iravani.
During the meeting, Rosemary DiCarlo, the UN undersecretary for political and peacebuilding affairs, noted that the attacks on Iran have underscored how children are impacted by conflict, specifically pointing to the shifts to remote learning that have been made in countries where US military bases are located, such as Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Oman.
About the strike on the school in Minab, DiCarlo said, “United States authorities have announced that they are looking into these reports.”
The stated goal of the meeting—protecting children's access to education in conflict zones—has also been undermined by President Donald Trump.
As the Associated Press reported, the UN Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary General for Children in Armed Conflict was among the UN offices that have suffered funding cuts under the Trump administration, with the White House withdrawing US support for its work in January.
UNESCO and the UN Children's Fund have also faced drastic funding reductions.
The first lady's status as chair of the meeting on children in conflict, said UN diplomat Mohamad Safa, "while the US and Israel killing children in Lebanon and Gaza, and murdered 165 schoolgirls in Iran, is the most hypocritical thing we have seen in the history of the Security Council."
Trump led the session the same day that Democracy for the Arab World Now called for an emergency General Assembly session to "declare the assault a war of aggression in violation of the UN Charter and to demand the immediate cessation of all hostilities.”
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Trump State Dept Announces Withdrawal From UNESCO Over Palestine Inclusion
Like: Palestinian officials responded by urging the U.S. not to "bind its own international standing to the crimes and violations committed by Israel."
Jul 22, 2025
The Trump administration's unrelenting backing of Israel was on display Tuesday as the U.S. State Department withdrew support for the United Nations agency tasked with promoting education and cultural understanding—but the organization's leader pledged that it would continue its work while welcoming "all the nations of the world."
State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce cited the decision by the U.N. Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to accept the state of Palestine as a member state as part of the reason for the Trump administration's withdrawal.
The inclusion of Palestine is "contrary to U.S. policy, and contributed to the proliferation of anti-Israel rhetoric within the organization," Bruce claimed without citing examples.
Audrey Azoulay, director-general of the agency, said the U.S. withdrawal—which President Donald Trump also imposed during his first term, and which will eliminate about 8% of UNESCO's international funding—was "regrettable," but that the organization would continue operating without a reduction in staff, having prepared for the president's exit.
"In spite of President Donald Trump's first withdrawal in 2017, UNESCO stepped up its efforts to take action wherever its mission could contribute to peace and demonstrated the pivotal nature of its mandate," said Azoulay, noting that UNESCO adopted a "global standard-setting instrument on the ethics of artificial intelligence," developed major programs for education in conflict settings, took action to defend biodiversity, and oversaw the reconstruction of Mosul, Iraq—all without the participation of the United States.
Azoulay added that the reasons for the U.S. withdrawal, which will go into effect in December 2026, "contradict the reality of UNESCO's efforts, particularly in the field of Holocaust education and the fight against antisemitism."
"Palestine firmly rejects the justifications provided by the United States for its withdrawal, considering them an unacceptable politicization of UNESCO's work and a failed attempt to deflect attention from the violations committed by Israel."
The Trump administration, along with many establishment Democratic and Republican lawmakers, has explicitly equated expressions of support for Palestinians and criticism of Israel with antisemitism. UNESCO has denounced the Israeli government and military for their destruction of schools and cultural sites and their killing of journalists in Gaza.
Azoulay emphasized that UNESCO is "the only United Nations agency responsible" for promoting Holocaust education and for the global fight against antisemitism, "and its work has been unanimously acclaimed by major specialized organizations such as the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C., the World Jewish Congress and its American Section, and the American Jewish Committee (AJC)."
"UNESCO will continue to carry out these missions," she said, "despite inevitably reduced resources."
The agency is also well known for designating World Heritage sites, more than 20 of which are in the United States.
U.S. Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, called the withdrawal from UNESCO "another assault by the Trump administration on international cooperation and U.S. global leadership."
Along with promoting education about the Holocaust, Meeks said, UNESCO "directly benefits the U.S. economy through its Creative Cities and World Heritage programs, through which the United States has recently secured two new World Heritage inscriptions in Ohio and Pennsylvania—promoting to the world the beauty, culture, and heritage of American cities."
Before Trump withdrew from UNESCO for the first time in 2017, the Obama administration cut funding to the organization after it admitted Palestine as a member state in 2011.
The state of Palestine's Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed "deep regret" over the Trump administration's decision on Tuesday.
"Palestine firmly rejects the justifications provided by the United States for its withdrawal, considering them an unacceptable politicization of UNESCO's work and a failed attempt to deflect attention from the violations committed by Israel, the illegal occupying power, against heritage, culture, and archaeological sites in Palestine, as well as in other areas such as education, science, media, and the environment," said officials.
The ministry also advised the U.S. not to "bind its own international standing to the crimes and violations committed by Israel."
"Otherwise," it said, "it would find itself compelled to withdraw from the entire multilateral international system, in order to shield Israel from accountability, thus encouraging it to continue perpetrating its crimes as a rogue state operating outside the framework of international legality."
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Antiwar Voices Honor Parnia Abbasi, Iranian Poet Killed by Israeli Bombing
"Women have always been the first victims in times of conflict," said one Iranian academic.
Jun 18, 2025
Peace advocates including a prominent Iranian academic and Venezuelan delegates to a United Nations event in Paris paid homage Wednesday to a young Iranian poet killed along with her parents and teenage brother last week during Israeli bombing of Tehran.
Parnia Abbasi, who was just days away from her 24th birthday, was killed in a June 13 airstrike on a residential complex in Tehran's Sattarkhan neighborhood during the first wave of Israel's unprovoked U.S.-backed war on Iran, which has reportedly killed at least 585 people and wounded over 1,300 others as of early Wednesday.
Iranian media reported that Parviz Abbasi and Masoumeh Shahriari—Parnia's retired father and mother—and her younger brother Parham Abbasi were also killed in the Israeli strike. The family was reportedly sleeping when their home was bombed.
According to The Washington Post's Yeganeh Torbati:
[Abbasi] dreamed of seeing the band Coldplay live in concert. She loved trying new foods and was learning Italian. She wrote poetry constantly and shared it with friends and family. She was so proud of having summited Iran's highest peak, Mount Damavand, that she made sure to mention that fact to everyone she met. She was, as her friends described in phone interviews and text messages this week, as bright and full of life as the sunflowers that she adored...
Abbasi's friends shared in interviews, messages, and on social media their favorite memories of her: how she took them camping outdoors for the first time, how she freely gave them gifts, how her sense of humor often took a moment to sink in and then bowled them over with laughter. She did silly dances for the camera.
The Tehran Times called Abbasi, who was also an English teacher, "a rising star among Iran's new generation of poets" who was "celebrated for her poignant and introspective poetry."
Abbasi was quoted in a memorial post by the literary magazine Vazn-e Donya as saying, "I look at everything that happens to me as something I might be able to write down—to express the feeling I had in that moment through poetry."
📢 A young Iranian poet Parnia Abbasi was killed after an Israeli attack hit her residential complex in Tehran. As the conflict between Israel and Iran escalates, more casualties are expected. PEN Sydney calls for a diplomatic resolution to ensure no more innocent lives are lost. 🕊️#iran #israel
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— PEN Sydney (@pensydney.bsky.social) June 16, 2025 at 6:54 PM
The following is an excerpt from Abbasi's best-known poem, The Extinguished Star, as translated by Ghazal Mosadeq:
you and I will come to an end
somewhere
the most beautiful poem in the world
falls quiet
you begin
somewhere
to cry the
murmur of life
but I will end
I burn
I'll be that extinguished star
in your sky
like smoke
The Tehran Times reported that renowned Iranian academic and artist Zahra Rahnavard—who according to the advocacy group PEN America has been under unofficial house arrest since 2011 for her women's rights activism—said during a Wednesday tribute to Abbasi that "women have always been the first victims in times of conflict."
"This time, they fell prey to bombardments carried out by a criminal infamous worldwide for killing women and children, from Gaza to Iran," she added, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Palestine.
Members of Venezuela's delegation to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization's (UNESCO) 10th Assembly of the Convention on the Diversity of Cultural Expressions in Paris also honored Abassi Wednesday, lamenting that "a voice died, a legacy in the making, another opportunity for cultural dialogue among peoples."
Arvin Abedi, one of Abbasi's many friends, told the Post that "when war happens, it's not just military people... who are casualties... Ordinary people can easily be destroyed."
Abedi added that Abbasi "has the right to not be forgotten."
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