Negligence in Action: The U.S. Attack on an Iranian School

On Saturdays, children attend school in Iran. Students at Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school in Minab, a city in the southern part of the country, were in class on February 28th when the U.S. and Israel first launched their joint military operation against Iran. The airstrikes began at 9:45 a.m. local time, and by 10, school staff were reportedly contacting parents to come pick up their children. A little less than an hour later, the school was struck by what has been confirmed to be a U.S.-manufactured Tomahawk missile. By the time many families got to the school, it had already been destroyed.

The strike killed at least 165 people, most of whom were students.

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Operation Epic Fury, as the U.S. calls it, has now turned into a weeks-long war with no clear end in sight. It was prefigured by increasing military aggression between the U.S., Israel, and Iran over many years. Previous bombings by the two countries have largely been limited to Iranian nuclear sites and attempts to assassinate leaders like former major general Qassem Soleimani. But the school bombing, which has been blamed on faulty targeting, appears to be an escalation, and an exceedingly dangerous one.

Just as the Trump administration has offered conflicting responses for the war’s purpose, the same pattern followed after the school bombing made headlines. On March 7th, President Trump denied that the U.S. had any involvement, claiming that Iran was actually responsible for the strike. Standing behind Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth did not agree explicitly with the president’s assertion, saying instead that the incident was under investigation. However, “the only side that targets civilians is Iran,” Hegseth insisted. “We think it was done by Iran, because they are very inaccurate with their munitions,” Trump said, doubling down.

At this point, the results of the military’s investigation have not yet been made public. Trump is no longer claiming that Iran was responsible for the bombing, and when asked if he would take responsibility said, “I don’t know about it.” He also told reporters that he’s “willing to live with” the final report.

Recent investigations of the bombing by organizations such as The New York Times and Amnesty International have found the U.S. responsible. By using social media videos, satellite imagery, and on-the-ground testimonials, these reports point to the necessity of investigating the bombing as a war crime.

Under international humanitarian law, attacking civilian buildings such as schools and hospitals is considered a war crime.

Researchers at Human Rights Watch (HRW), a nonprofit watchdog group, used satellite imagery to find that all buildings in the compound that included the school were targeted in a similar manner, including a health clinic and a pharmacy. “That pointed to us that it was highly unlikely that this was an accidental or incidental hit or injury to the school,” says Akshaya Kumar, the director of crisis advocacy at HRW. “Rather, it was a case where it appears like every building in this complex and also the school building, which was adjacent and no longer in the complex, was hit in a similar way.”

Under international humanitarian law, attacking civilian buildings such as schools and hospitals is considered a war crime. Military forces are also expected to take practical precautions to minimize or eliminate potential civilian harm, as outlined in the Geneva Conventions of 1949. Beyond technically being bound to these treaties, the U.S. had also committed to an intergovernmental commitment called the Safe Schools Declaration in January of 2025.

Created in 2015 by the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack (GCPEA), the Safe Schools Declaration has been endorsed by 123 nations. It aims to ensure that countries protect education (students, teachers, and schools) from attack during times of armed conflict, and “restrict” the use of educational sites for military purposes. As an endorsee, the U.S. violated this agreement in addition to international humanitarian law.

In response to questions raised by the Prospect about whether GCPEA considers the U.S. to have done so, Lisa Chung Bender, the organization’s executive director, said that the agreement is nonbinding. “The Declaration is a public, inter-governmental political agreement to adopt policies and practices that prevent exactly the type of harm happening in Iran and many other countries around the world,” says Chung Bender. “Schools must remain safe spaces, even in times of armed conflict. We call on all parties to uphold their obligations, including taking all feasible precautions to protect civilians and civilian objects.”

THE DETERMINATION BY SOME HUMAN RIGHTS GROUPS that the strike on Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary was not a mistake raises questions about why it happened in the first place. Officials have said that preliminary findings suggest that the U.S. was relying on outdated targeting data, which identified the school as a part of an Iranian naval base. Originally it was, but since at least 2016, the site has been walled off from the base, later being developed into a school with play areas and a sports field. This can be seen through commercially accessible satellite imagery.

Beyond the visual evidence that the school was in fact a school, and not a military area, a Reuters investigation found that the school had maintained a yearslong online presence. Photos on the website showed girls in uniform playing, and drawings made by the students. In the face of considerable proof that the site was being used for educational purposes, it’s likely that the U.S. at the least neglected to do its due diligence in determining where to strike. (Initial reports that artificial intelligence could be to blame for the bad targeting were subsequently dismissed.)

“We’re [HRW] recommending that the situation be investigated as a likely war crime, because it’s possible that proceeding with the strike without either checking the information or doing a pattern of life study to watch and see what’s happening around this facility was reckless,” says Kumar. “Acting recklessly is one of the ways you can commit a war crime, even if you weren’t necessarily intentionally or deliberately seeking to hit a school.”

Prioritizing action over caution when it comes to avoiding unnecessary harm seems to be a hallmark of the Trump administration. Over the course of three weeks, more than a thousand Iranian civilians have been killed, and thousands more have been injured.

It’s uncommon for the U.S. to directly target active schools during times of conflict. But there have been instances in which militaries supported by or collaborating with U.S. forces have struck educational sites. In March of 2017, the U.S.-led military coalition (Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS) attacked a boarding school in Mansourah, Syria, killing dozens of civilians. Similar to the strike on Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary, the coalition either did not attempt to identify civilian presence in the area, or simply failed to avoid or minimize civilian casualties.

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A few months later, the U.S. issued a report that said that an investigation into the bombing found that “although all feasible precautions were taken and the decision to strike complied with the law of armed conflict, unintended civilian casualties regrettably occurred.” At the time of the strike, the school was being used as housing for displaced civilians.

In 2018, the Afghan air force, which alongside other Afghan security forces received significant financial backing from the U.S, struck a boys’ school in a Taliban-controlled area of the country. At the time of the attack, the school was hosting a graduation ceremony that attracted hundreds of civilians. Conflicting testimonials about the presence of Taliban members in the vicinity and whether Afghan forces took steps to prevent civilian casualties led the U.N. to investigate the incident.

Globally, educational sites remain vulnerable to attack: In 2024, the U.N. recorded 1,265 attacks on schools, particularly in areas that are experiencing armed conflict. A hotbed has been the Gaza strip, in occupied Palestine, perpetrated by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

Israel has been recognized by a U.N. special committee, human rights advocacy groups, and genocide studies scholars as committing genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza. A multitude of systemic, unrelenting attack strategies have been used to kill, starve, and cause harm to civilians en masse. Over 73,000 Palestinians have been killed, with a study in 2024 determining that 31.6 percent of casualties were children. Targeting schools has been a regular strategy of the IDF, and as of mid-2024, nearly 90 percent of school buildings in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed.

Scholasticide, or the intentional mass destruction of education, is a blatant violation of international humanitarian law. If and when the war ends in Gaza, it seems unlikely that the education system will fully recover. “I think there’s going to be a long, lasting impact on access to education, including higher education there, and we’re [HRW] really concerned, because it doesn’t appear like even the plans for the reconstruction of Gaza include plans for secondary or higher educational institutions, even though Gaza boasted many of those prior to the Israeli campaign of destruction,” says Kumar.

The U.S. has provided over $16 billion in direct military aid to Israel since the start of the Gaza war. Now, the two nations have entered into war with Iran, which was kicked off by a school bombing. Even if attacking the school was not part of a strategy to target education, it most certainly had a significant impact: Dozens of children are dead, and their educational home was destroyed.