Evidence compiled by CNN suggests that the United States military was responsible for the strike on an elementary school in southern Iran that killed scores of children, in what is the deadliest…
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If this turns out to be true, which seems increasingly likely day by day, this will be the humanitarian price against which the rest of the campaign will be measured. The US will have ceded much of the moral high ground they claimed in avenging the slaughter of innocent protesters.
By mempko 2026-03-0623:23 You forget the UI killed a million Iraqis and also had a torture prison. I don't think the US has every had the high ground.
> The US will have ceded much of the moral high ground they claimed in avenging the slaughter of innocent protesters.
It will be forgotten soon.
By andriy_koval 2026-03-0621:241 reply > It will be forgotten soon.
it won't. Opposing US political side will weaponize this incident in their interests.
By mothballed 2026-03-0621:06 I hope you're right, and one day we don't read 20 or 30 years from now the biography of a terrorist, and it starts out with their experience being the sibling of a child injured at one of these schools.
By AlecSchueler 2026-03-0621:131 reply In the US, but not in Iran and elsewhere.
By bathtub365 2026-03-0622:471 reply I’d argue that Iran has a huge influence on US politics, as the US is currently at war with them.
The fate of Iranian civilians does not impact US politics.
A majority of Americans are completely unconcerned by the suffering of victims of the empire abroad.
By mxmilkiib 2026-03-077:16 the "concern" of US civilians in general is different from the result of their nations behaviours
Can't cede moral high ground when that moral high ground is a claim no one believes in anymore. If they ever did.
By Herring 2026-03-0622:00 It’s basically like North Korea calling itself “democratic peoples republic”. Just roll your eyes and move on.
By thomassmith65 2026-03-079:232 reply The IRGC's strategy in this conflict has been to blow up civilian targets in nearly all nations surrounding it.
It appears the IRGC has chosen civilian targets (eg: high rise apartments, airports, oil fields) on purpose, but if not, then they have such poor technology that their strikes are random.
Killing people in 11 nations to put pressure on the two nations that actually attacked you is a good demonstration of the Iranian regime's morals.
If the USA or Israel bombed this school, it clearly was an accident, since the only party it benefits is the Iranian regime.
Although the UAE and everyone else Iran has attacked may not have directly attacked Iran, they are hosting the American infrastructure making the attacks possible.
I can understand why Iran considers most gulf states complicit.
By thomassmith65 2026-03-0716:321 reply Here's a map of the 'complicit' nations the IRGC has been bombing:
https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1536/cpsprodpb/b7ef/live/f6673...
That's: Syria, Lebanon, Cyprus, Azerbaijan, Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, and Oman.
There is no point for the IRGC to do this other than to create such chaos and fear that the world pressures America to relent.
By Gud 2026-03-0717:49 And why do you believe the USA doesn’t have bases at these locations?
I believe Iran leadership are aware of geo politics much better than the American and even European.
They are experts at the new type of war fare, war with low cost kamikaze drones.
By plaidfuji 2026-03-0713:28 I agree, but it is still very unfortunate. It’s a lot less compelling to argue “but we killed fewer civilians, and it was only on accident”
By mullingitover 2026-03-0619:476 reply I get the feeling AI will be blamed for this, but I would not rule out the hypothesis that this was done intentionally in order to incite Iran to do something that bolsters support for the US regime’s actions. They desperately need domestic political support for this war and right now even the hardcore MAGA people are against it.
Reporting from the CBC mentioned that the school was located within an area surrounded by other military buildings. The building housing the school was used for military purposes in the past.
I think it's more likely that the US was going off of outdated intelligence.
By jihadjihad 2026-03-0620:191 reply Yeah, Occam's Razor and all that. The current admin has proven itself to be poor players of games like checkers, let alone 5D chess.
By mylifeandtimes 2026-03-0620:34 Sounds more like Bloody Stupid Jonssons Razor than Occams razor. The dumbest possible explanation is probably right.
Here is a bit more info:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/3/3/questions-over-minab...
"It can be said with a degree of confidence that, in 2013, the site was used exclusively as a military barracks with a strict security character, as there was no indication of an independent civilian use of any part of the complex.
But this changed radically in 2016. Satellite images dated September 6, 2016 capture the main turning point, when new internal walls were created and built, fully and tightly separating the school building area from the rest of the military block."
If they work with intelligence data older than 10 years, then this would still account to gross negligence, possibly counting as a war crime. But misstakes happen and they did used AI for target tracking.
But the other interpretation is more dark. Because it was not just some school, but a school where the children of the IRGC go, the elite of the system. And Trump said he does not want a regime change, but rather someone from the current system who just bows to US demands. So the threat of killing all the leadership, anyone could be next - but also the threat to kill also their children and familiy until they surrender.
To quote Hegseth:
"no stupid rules of engagement,” “no politically correct wars,” and “no nation-building quagmire.”
Threatening to kill also their families makes sense with this kind of language and logic. At some point you will find someone who values the life of his family higher than that of the nation and religion.
But I do hope my theory is wrong.
When I saw that interview I immediately thought, people like Hegseth are why treaties like the Geneva Convention were created in the first place.
By surgical_fire 2026-03-0621:141 reply People like Hegseth is why you sometimes need Nuremberg trials too.
By ZeroGravitas 2026-03-0714:291 reply Trump has repeatedly, on record, enthusiastically endorsed killing the wives and children of enemies.
By ZeroGravitas 2026-03-0817:55 "The other thing with the terrorists is you have to take out their families, when you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families. They care about their lives, don’t kid yourself. When they say they don’t care about their lives, you have to take out their families,” Trump said.
https://edition.cnn.com/2015/12/02/politics/donald-trump-ter...
During the past week, in a series of interviews and events, Trump has articulated a loose, but expansive set of principles that, if enacted, would mark a fundamental shift in U.S. foreign policy from the limits put in place by Democratic President Barack Obama and the Republican-led Congress. In addition to arguing in favor of reinstating waterboarding, a technique that mimics the sensation of drowning, and "much more than that," Trump has advocated the killing of suspected terrorists' wives and children, which appears in violation of international law.
https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/to-fight-isis-torture-terror...
By ynac 2026-03-0620:36 Agreed with others here...and updating intel for primary targets is customary. Which obviously didn't happen here. The targeting cycle and the F2T2 cycle, dynamic targeting loops (probably) should have brought the latest intel about the school to light.
As for whether it was AI - the US DOD Ethic's first tenent is Responsible - personnel remain responsible...
By jiggawatts 2026-03-0620:271 reply Many similar incidents occurred in Ukraine, where Russia targeted apartment blocks that were built on the former site of some sort of military building that was demolished decades ago.
The ultimate hubris is launching a multi million dollar missile to kill civilians because you couldn’t be bothered to check Google street view (or whatever).
Russia actively targets hospitals, fire departments and schools for years and you attribute it to "outdated info".
Shame on you.
By jiggawatts 2026-03-0620:393 reply It was quite obviously outdated info.
What people don’t seem to understand is the word “targeted”.
They see some obviously civilian target in ruins with screaming parents outside and they have an instant visceral emotional reaction: “What kind of monster would do something like this on purpose!?”
Practically nobody targets civilian building with expensive precision munitions! They’re expensive! There’s limited supply! Targets are chosen to maximise the military effect.
The problem is that the victims and journalists have “boots on the ground”. They’re right there and can clearly see the civilian nature of the target with their own eyes.
The person doing the targeting from som bunker thousands of miles away can see only blurry rectangles on an outdated map, has sparse intelligence reports, and targets coordinates. They’re not walking up to the missile like it’s some sort of intelligent war animal and whispering “kill civilians!” in its ear.
Similarly, they’re not on the ground standing outside the civilian target waving the missile in with light sticks like some airport tarmac staff.
I repeat: they’re thousands of miles away and have to target hundreds of buildings that all look the same-ish from space and aren’t magically labelled by God as “no longer valid under the Geneva conventions” or whatever.
I’m not saying that this makes war good or in any way ethical, but you can see how a mistake is made that doesn’t require cartoonish evil people to explain.
>Practically nobody targets civilian building with expensive precision munitions! They’re expensive! There’s limited supply! Targets are chosen to maximise the military effect.
We're not dealing with a rational or competent military chain of command. We're dealing with people who believe they're bringing about the Biblical Second Coming and that rules of engagement are "woke." These are literally cartoonishly evil people. They probably chose targets by asking Grok.
By jiggawatts 2026-03-0622:081 reply I'm going to confidently state that nobody in the US military chain of command gave the order to "mix some schools into the target list" for any reason, religious or not.
That's absurd on its face, and if you honestly believe that, then your mental model of how the world (and people in general) function is fundamentally broken.
By krapp 2026-03-0622:23 >That's absurd on its face, and if you honestly believe that, then your mental model of how the world (and people in general) function is fundamentally broken.
I'm not talking about the world or people in general, I'm talking about about the Commander in Chief Donald Trump and "Secretary of War" Pete Hegseth, the people who set the tone and make the decisions. And if you listen to either one of them, especially Hegseth, you'll realize it isn't absurd on its face at all.
Even if no one gave a specific order to "mix some schools into the target list" this administration clearly and explicitly - as in, has literally stated on the record - does not care about morality, ethics, rules of engagement or anything of the sort. It's not out of the question that they would intentionally target civilian infrastructure just as a show of force and aggression, or simply not care because their goal is and I'm quoting here "killing people and breaking things."
By jiggawatts 2026-03-0621:191 reply Oh sure, and the US did it against both Japan and Germany in WW2, but those were not even remotely the same scenario as precision strikes against the IRGC and Iranian leadership in general.
This was clearly a horrific mistake, especially obvious since the girls school used to be a military building.
I was talking about Russia, not US incompetence or malice, who have an explicit tactic to target civilians.
By jiggawatts 2026-03-0621:571 reply They target civilian infrastructure like power plants and the like, but again, that's "not the same" as purposefully targeting a school or an apartment block. The latter they do fairly clearly by accident, because I've seen at least four video clips of Ukranians interviewed outside of a bombed civilian building saying something to the effect of "Oh yeah, back in 1990 there was a military training facility here but it was demolished in `91."
Note that 1991 was the year Ukraine and Russia split and Russia stopped getting a "direct feed" of things like urban planning information from Kiev.
By mullingitover 2026-03-070:221 reply > civilian infrastructure like power plants
The Russians have bombed multiple children’s hospitals.
By jiggawatts 2026-03-070:441 reply Yes, well... the Russians seem especially unconcerned with checking targets for validity before mashing the fire button.
The logic they're presenting is largely the same as Israel's excuse for bombing hospitals in Gaza.
When there's a war in a civilian area, injured soldiers from the front line will be mostly treated at the nearest available hospital, which then overflows into regional hospitals further back, etc... A country under siege at the scales seen in Ukraine and Gaza don't get to pick and choose specific hospitals, they're all overflowing, so they use every available medical facility, including children's hospitals.
Worse, the convoys taking the wounded to these hospitals are more than likely military trucks and are driven by and/or escorted by military personnel in uniform.
On a blurry satellite picture or drone video the enemy will see a building frequently visited by the military.
"Legitimate target!"
Boom.
"Oops."
By mullingitover 2026-03-070:521 reply That's a lot of contortions to go through to avoid the clear Occam's Razor conclusion that these people are simply evil scumbags doing evil scumbag things. Bombing hospitals because they thought they contained wounded troops isn't a defense, that's a whole war crime of its own!
They have an extremely long track record of committing atrocities. You don't need to go out of your way to give them the benefit of the doubt, unless you're literally in Russia where they'll imprison you for telling the truth about what they're doing.
By urikaduri 2026-03-138:06 I remember the time when Israel shot a missile under a hospital in Gaza and immediately after the head of Hamas, brother of Yehia Sinwar was confirmed dead. Maybe our intelligence isn't that bad after all.
Meanwhile doctors without borders denied seeing any militant activity in hospital, despite e.g one of their doctors turning out to be an Islamic Jihad rocket troops commander, or half the electricty of an hospital being diverted to a bunker right beneath it, or people firing from hospital windows at Al-Shabab anti-hamas militia.
And now they are unwilling to give a list of names of their members to be vetted for operating in the strip.
By petre 2026-03-0621:39 You forgot about churches and shopping malls.
By fakedang 2026-03-0713:55 > I think it's more likely that the US was going off of outdated intelligence.
While Israel has enough intelligence to track where the Ayatollah is hidden away after the initial strikes on Iran. Does that sound believable to you? Either Israel and USA are pisspoor at coordinating intelligence, or Israel wilfully let the US attack the place and take the flak for it.
By dzdt 2026-03-0620:21 I do think there is a strong possibility the people in charge in the US government believe an Iran state sponsored terrorism attack would be a political benefit to them. Such things boost support for the sitting President, and could also give political cover for additional authoritarian acts to help them retain power. Would they do the school attack on purpose? Maybe? But for sure they keep the war going until they generate the response they are looking for...
By rustyhancock 2026-03-0620:171 reply I can't say I'm as conspiratorial as you.
I don't really know how these systems work, perhaps I shouldn't speak without research.
But it seems like a pretty basic error.
The base has looks like 5 buildings in an L shape. 4 buildings where hit in an L shape.
I can imagine the sites were picked from a satellite image and the wrong building was marked.
Or in flight from the camera the wrong buildings were marked.
It is our arrogance that we can blow up hundreds of buildings that makes us try and see meaning behind these mistakes.
Instead we should just be far more cautious about blowing buildings up because these mistakes are inevitable.
The perfect just war simply does not exist.
By JKCalhoun 2026-03-072:36 > The perfect just war simply does not exist.
Agree.
In the moment before war is initiated, before a strike is launched against a country, the leaders considering war must immediately assume they are likely to destroy a school full of children some point.
By Kapura 2026-03-0619:53 It's a really warped mind that could think the best way to build domestic war support would be to blow up a girls' school, but frankly i haven't seen anything from the u.s. government that makes it sound implausible.
By urikaduri 2026-03-074:25 You really think the IRGC cared about schoolchildren? Give me a break, they used to have child soldiers.
By surgical_fire 2026-03-0619:593 reply Sounds too convoluted, and implies that those in power in the countries attacking Iran have a grand plan that goes beyond killing people in Iran.
The explanation is simpler. They want death, so they are bombing shit indiscriminately
Hitting a school was not a mistake, it was the point.
By _alternator_ 2026-03-0620:153 reply I think a tragic mistake like this was foreseeable (in a vague sense), but I highly doubt that anyone intentionally bombed an elementary school full of children.
The NYT had some good reporting on this, and you can see how the mistake was made. The elementary school used to be part of the IRGC base until 2016. Then it was fenced off and made an elementary school. The “shooter” (in this case, the USA) had a duty to check that the target was currently a valid military target. This verification, if it was done at all, was clearly the problem.
I’m sure you have someone directly responsible for this mistake who is going to have a hard time living with themselves. But like I said, starting a war leads to inevitable tragedy, and I doubt the people who are indirectly responsible will ever recognize their culpability in this.
It really doesn't matter whether it was a mistake or how the mistake was made. If it were your kid's elementary school that got blown up, would you say "Oh, well, it wasn't intentional. The bad guys just had outdated intelligence. These things happen."
> It really doesn't matter whether it was a mistake
It does matter if people go around saying that “they want death, so they are bombing shit indiscriminately.”
I'm not sure how "they want war, so they are bombing negligently" is any different. Or morally better.
It's not, but that's not what the USA wants. They want Iran to stop destabilising the ME, and to eliminate the threat to the USA consisting of the Iranian nuke program, the ballistic missile program, and the religious zeal to use them.
What on earth makes you assert the USA just 'wants war'? If this war goes on for too long Trump is cooked. He'll lose the election and might even be unpopular enough to cop the persecution he deserves.
By mullingitover 2026-03-070:35 > What on earth makes you assert the USA just 'wants war'?
The "Department of War" they created before promptly starting an absolute textbook War of Aggression is evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that the war was premeditated.
By surgical_fire 2026-03-071:19 > stop destabilising the ME
USA is the destabilizing force. In the case of Iran specifically, what happenes today is in many ways a consequence of the 1953 coup.
By etc-hosts 2026-03-092:42 > They want Iran to stop destabilising the ME, and to eliminate the threat to the USA consisting of the Iranian nuke program, the ballistic missile program, and the religious zeal to use them.
US and Israeli leaders have said recently that the war will continue until Iran is not a threat, for mostly the exact reasons you just listed. I'm not sure how you bomb the religious zeal out of someone.
I was listening to a fairly right wing British pundit today, who is very publicly funded by British and European NATO interests, he said that the US saying they will continue to bomb Iran until it is not a threat reminded him a lot of one of Russia's state Ukraine war goals of "we will de-Nazify Ukraine".
very open ended nebulous goals with the benefit of being easily stretched around any agenda the invading party has at the moment.
By surgical_fire 2026-03-0620:331 reply > “they want death, so they are bombing shit indiscriminately.”
It's still the most probable explanation
By SauntSolaire 2026-03-0621:031 reply Disagree, negligence seems more likely
By surgical_fire 2026-03-0621:112 reply https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/hegseth-insists-the-iran-...
"No stupid rules of engagement, no nation building quagmire, no democracy building exercise, no politically correct wars. We fight to win, and we don't waste time or lives," Hegseth said.
Words of your Secretary of War, not mine.
This is not a woke war. This is a war where you bomb schools and kill children.
By ryandrake 2026-03-0622:01 The ridiculous renaming to "Department of War" supports this attitude, as well. They're declaring to everyone our intent to be belligerents. That the US military is meant to be aggressors and instigators, rather than defenders. All signs point to an administration bent on aggression and destruction.
I mean, to be fair, the US always has been the instigators, but it's now official, something this administration is proud of.
By SauntSolaire 2026-03-0623:271 reply And? It's quite a leap to take from that statement that they intentionally bombed a school. In fact, if they were trying to bomb schools, then it's quite the coincidence that they missed all the rest, and just happened to hit the one that used to be a military base.
By donkeybeer 2026-03-0716:181 reply They made it as clear as possible they don't give a shit about collateral damage. You have some very immense reading difficulties.
By SauntSolaire 2026-03-0721:042 reply Surgical_fire wrote:
"Hitting a school was not a mistake, it was the point."
And
"This is not a woke war. This is a war where you bomb schools and kill children."
I also never said they especially cared about collateral damage, try not to project your opinions onto other people's comments.
By donkeybeer 2026-03-082:27 And schools, hospitals, aid workers, etc have of course been "khamas" and "irgc" to these two invaders so that's hardly surprising.
By donkeybeer 2026-03-0723:52 Aka they don't care about innocent deaths, they want to cause deaths.
By colonCapitalDee 2026-03-0621:09 You're intentionally missing the point. Every time a bomb drops we're rolling the dice. Hits on civilian targets are inevitable, just like bugs are inevitable. The only solution is not to go to war at all. Don't blame the person who dropped the bomb, blame the people who ordered the bombs to be dropped.
By surgical_fire 2026-03-0620:32 No, I firmly believe that decades of dehumanization of Iranians in particular and Muslims in general makes this sort of "tragic mistake" desirable.
I don't think whoever was responsible for this gives many fucks about the lives of Iranians.
If a foreign power bombed anything in the US and children died people would just consider them monsters, without further considerations. No one would be pondering about faulty intel.
I refuse to launder the vileness of the aggressors here.
By mrguyorama 2026-03-0620:491 reply >but I highly doubt that anyone intentionally bombed an elementary school full of children
Hegseth said to your face "No stupid rules of engagement", "This is not a politically correct war"
These are the people who have been purposely and loudly defending Israel bombing innocent people. They genuinely believe, as they say to your face, that it is important and necessary to be brutal and extreme to win war.
Intentionally disregarding rules of engagement and protecting innocent life IS intentionally bombing that school. Civilian casualties are a reality of war and the best you can do is work your ass off to reduce them, so openly advocating for NOT doing that is intentionally killing people.
By _alternator_ 2026-03-0621:40 Trust me, I’m not trying to defend the leadership of the DoW. But I do believe that there is a difference between reckless indifference and actually intentionally bombing a girls school.
Both sound like war crimes to me, but the latter sounds implausible given the known facts. Let’s not redefine words like ‘intentional’ just because we are appalled. Giving something awful an “awfuller” name is not going to help.
This is real life not cartoon villany. The US administration is not a kind one, but their goals are not just 'death for people in Iran'.
By donkeybeer 2026-03-0716:201 reply Why else would they start an unprovoked war while pretending to negotiate peace with Iran? They want death of Iranians.
By SauntSolaire 2026-03-0721:28 For the same reason they deposed Maduro, control, obviously.
Your mistake is thinking they care about Iranians enough to want them dead. The reality is that they want Iran to bend the knee, at which point they'll go back to not thinking about them at all.
By killjoywashere 2026-03-0620:07 Yeah, Hanlon's Razor applies.
What is not clear is how the US received such faulty intelligence. It is also strange how such a blunder happened on day 1. Did some followed Iranian targets go hide in the school? If so, did Iran have a hand in engineering misleading intel for the US, or was it solely the US' doing?
Today a boy's school in Iran was affected by an explosion. The intelligence received by the US chronically seems troubled.
I’m afraid Israel will not hesitate from turning Iran into rubble just like what they did in Palestine.
Israel definitely has a lot of moles in Iran. They weren’t bothered to confirm whether the target is a school. US earlier tried to turn it on Iran’s failed defense launch.
By azinman2 2026-03-0620:36 Israel doesn't want/need Iran's land. It wants the regime toppled, and the country split apart 10 ways so the next regime is smaller and more checked.
By xyzelement 2026-03-0620:42 CNN: "suggests that the United States military was responsible"
US Military: investigating whether it's responsible.
"Mandeep": rants about Israel.
By flyinglizard 2026-03-0620:24 [flagged]
By mothballed 2026-03-0619:422 reply I read secondhand that it was used for military purposes during the Obama years and it appears no one tagged it as now being used as a school for the past 10 years. No idea if it's correct, but it's plausible they were operating off of extremely stale intelligence.
By killjoywashere 2026-03-0620:112 reply that sounds plausible. For people not tracking, the concept of intelligence at play is "object based development". One analyst drops a label, brief synopsis, whatever, and it just sits there for the next person who comes along. The world view gets more accurate over time, but there's a recency error that's hard to measure until the probability function collapses with a measurement.
By mmooss 2026-03-0620:40 > The world view gets more accurate over time
Is that true? I can imagine it's true at first, going from zero bits of information to 1, etc. But information rots over time, and eventually a collection of old information may rot faster than new information improves the world view.
Also, the overall world view isn't especially important, at least not in this case. Each element's accuracy is what's important.
Hopefully each tag is accompanied by a date, at least.
By meheleventyone 2026-03-0620:21 The collapse in this case being the murder of children at school.
By BigTTYGothGF 2026-03-0620:161 reply Sounds like (war) criminal negligence.
By zardo 2026-03-0620:44 Yeah, it being an honest mistake moves this down from a crime you should hang for to, also still a crime you should hang for.
By ant6n 2026-03-0620:20 Gemini lost context and hallucinated some tanks.
