President Donald Trump claimed Iran was responsible for a missile strike on an elementary school in Minab, Iran, which killed many civilians. Multiple U.S. defense officials and a Pentagon analysis contradict this, suggesting the strike had the signature of a precise U.S. operation using a Tomahawk cruise missile, a weapon only employed by the United States.
The officials indicate the school was likely hit due to target misidentification during a strike on an adjacent Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps base. Trump's own Defense Secretary declined to endorse his claim, and U.S. Central Command stated it was inappropriate to comment ahead of the investigation's findings.
The main topics covered are the contradictory claims about responsibility for the attack, the evidence pointing to U.S. involvement, and the internal U.S. government pushback against the President's statements.
President Donald Trump claimed that Iran, not the U.S., struck an elementary school in the southern Iranian town of Minab, the attack with the highest civilian death toll in Trump’s second Iran war.
Three current and former defense officials, however, pushed back on his claims. Even Trump’s own Pentagon chief, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, refused to back him up. U.S. Central Command appeared to suggest that Trump’s comments were “inappropriate.”
“This is another instance of Trump lying and just talking out of his ass,” said a U.S. government official who reviewed satellite images of the Shajarah Tayyebeh school. “This clearly was not a failed rocket from the IRGC base.”
The U.S. official was referring to an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps navy base that was adjacent to the school. The claim that the IRGC struck the school spread as part of a misinformation campaign about the attack peddled by social media accounts that support restoring Iran’s monarchy.
The U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak freely, said it was clear that Iran did not strike the school. Trump, however, endorsed the dubious claim when taking questions from the press aboard Air Force One on Saturday.
“Based on what I’ve seen, it was done by Iran,” Trump said of the attack, which killed at least 175 people, many of them children, according to Iranian health officials and state media.
Hegseth, standing alongside Trump, was asked if that was true and failed to endorse the claim.
“We’re certainly investigating,” he said before offering a non-denial denial. “But the only side that targets civilians is Iran.”
When asked for comment on the status of the U.S. military investigation, U.S. Central Command, the regional military command that oversees the Middle East, said that getting ahead of the investigation’s findings — precisely what Trump did — was improper.
The CENTCOM spokesperson, who did not give their name, said, “It would be inappropriate to comment given the incident is under investigation.”
The White House did not respond to requests for comment.
Missile Used Only by U.S.
A video released on Sunday by Iran’s semiofficial Mehr News Agency shows a cruise missile striking the naval base beside the elementary school as smoke appears to billow from the school itself, indicating that it had been struck just before the attack on the IRGC base. According to Bellingcat, the cruise missile was a Tomahawk.
“This munition is only employed by the U.S., not Israel or Iran,” said Wes Bryant, a former Special Operations joint terminal attack controller who called in thousands of strikes across the greater Middle East.
Bryant, a former adviser to a Pentagon body that provides analysis and training to mitigate civilian harm, said all were clearly struck by targeted munitions, with the school likely hit due to “target misidentification,” meaning U.S. forces mistook it for a military target.
“The strikes on this compound have the signature of a U.S. strike,” Bryant told The Intercept. “The strikes on this compound are also incredibly precise and well-placed. This entire compound — including the girls’ school — was deliberately targeted in a highly precise strike operation.”
While the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school was once connected to the IRGC base by roads, the building was partitioned off by 2016, according to an investigation by New Lines Magazine. Reports of the attack began to appear on social media just after 11:30 a.m. local time. An analysis by the New York Times based on satellite imagery, social media posts, and verified videos found that the school was hit at roughly the same time as the naval base. The video released on Sunday by the Mehr News Agency appears to confirm this.
Another former Pentagon official who specialized in civilian harm issues echoed Bryant and the current U.S. official.
“The entry holes suggest a near perpendicular entry. Meaning, this strike was precisely targeting the structures from high above, not some short range attack with a ballistic missile,” said the former Pentagon official, who spoke on background because their present employment doesn’t allow them to comment. The official said the vertical entry suggested a more parabolic trajectory than a short-range missile would show, indicating a longer-range weapon was used.
That former defense official pushed back against Trump’s claims, noting that the attack occurred within an hour of the announcement of U.S.–Israeli strikes and an hour before any reported Iranian retaliation.
“All evidence,” said the former official, “points to the compound being repeatedly attacked — over the course of a couple hours potentially — with highly accurate munitions that we know the U.S. and Israel routinely use and have used in strikes across Iran.”
High Rate of Strikes
CENTCOM would not offer an estimated civilian death toll for the U.S. war on Iran. More than 1,230 Iranian civilians have been killed, according to the Tehran Times.
“America, regardless of what so-called international institutions say, is unleashing the most lethal and precise air power campaign in history,” Hegseth said at a March 2 press conference. “No stupid rules of engagement.”
A new investigation by Airwars, a U.K.-based air strike monitoring group, found that the first days of the Iran war saw far more sites targeted than any recent U.S. or Israeli military campaign.
“While the rate of civilian harm cannot be solely predicted by the number of targets hit, initial indications suggest it has been high — particularly with U.S. targets correlating with heavily populated areas,” according to the Airwars report. “The targets map heavily onto the highest populated areas.”
For Bryant, the former Pentagon adviser on civilian harm, Trump’s claim that Iran hit the school is part of a pattern — and a dark turn for the country.
“If the administration truly believed that this was Iranian-caused, whether intentionally or inadvertently, then they should have immediately stated so, along with providing intelligence or information that proves such an assertion. But we know this was not the case,” Bryant said. “It is the stuff of tyrannical dictators to fabricate such propaganda for the sake of saving face and discrediting one’s enemies. This is not the behavior of a leader of the free world.”
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IT’S BEEN A DEVASTATING year for journalism — the worst in modern U.S. history.
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I’M BEN MUESSIG, The Intercept’s editor-in-chief. It’s been a devastating year for journalism — the worst in modern U.S. history.
We have a president with utter contempt for truth aggressively using the government’s full powers to dismantle the free press. Corporate news outlets have cowered, becoming accessories in Trump’s project to create a post-truth America. Right-wing billionaires have pounced, buying up media organizations and rebuilding the information environment to their liking.
In this most perilous moment for democracy, The Intercept is fighting back. But to do so effectively, we need to grow.
That’s where you come in. Will you help us expand our reporting capacity in time to hit the ground running in 2026?
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