Ongoing US military investigation indicates Iranian girls’ school was mistakenly marked as military target

The U.S. military may have been responsible for the strike on a girls’ school in southern Iran on Feb. 28 that killed at least 175 people, most of them children, the regime claimed. This is according to an ongoing military investigation that was cited by several American news outlets, including CNN and The New York Times.

Iranian state media said that at least 168 children and 14 teachers were killed, though there is no way to verify these numbers independently.

The Tomahawk missile strike that hit the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school in the town of Minab was part of a larger attack on an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Navy base.

The school building was originally part of the base but was fenced off at some point and converted into a school. However, the building was reportedly still labeled a military target when the “target coding” was passed from the Defense Intelligence Agency to U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM).

A NYT visual investigation suggests it was a US strike on an Iranian school that killed 175 people, mainly children.https://t.co/6JqCqhduAt

— Trip Gabriel (@tripgabriel) March 5, 2026

The NYT cited sources briefed on the ongoing investigation, confirming that CENTCOM officers had created the target coordinates using outdated data from the Defense Intelligence Agency, while noting that several key questions remain about how such a mistake could occur without being double-checked.

Accusations over the deadly incident had quickly been leveled at Israel. However, an IDF spokesman said there was no known Israeli strike in that area. The U.S. and Israeli militaries have roughly divided Iran into two zones of operation, with the southern coast being an area of responsibility for U.S. troops.

Among the most prominent voices to accuse Israel was Tucker Carlson, the disgraced former Fox News anchor turned anti-Israel activist. “Israel does do things like that,” he charged in a recent episode of his podcast, adding, without evidence, that “almost all of our signals information out of Iran is translated by our ally and partner in this war, Israel.”

NYT’s @ShawnMcCreesh: “You just suggested that Iran somehow got its hands on a tomahawk and bombed its own elementary school on the first day of the war, but you’re the only person in your government saying this. Even your defense secretary wouldn’t say that when he was asked… pic.twitter.com/uwnK836bKJ

— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) March 9, 2026

U.S. officials also told the NYT that the erroneous strike was more likely the result of human error during wartime, rather than technological factors such as the use of AI programs like Claude, the large language model developed by Anthropic and employed to identify points of interest for military intelligence.

The deadly incident was quickly exploited by the Iranian regime to underscore its claims that the war is illegitimate. In the first statement attributed to new supreme leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei and read on state TV, the strike was highlighted as one of the primary justifications for revenge against the U.S. and Israel.

“I assure everyone that we will not forgo revenge for the blood of your martyrs,” said Khamenei, noting that revenge would be taken not just for the death of his father, but “every member of the nation who is martyred by the enemy.”

“The crime that the enemy deliberately committed regarding the Shajareh-Tayyebeh School in Minab has a special status in this process,” he said.

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said U.S. President Donald Trump would accept the findings of the investigation while noting that, “as The New York Times acknowledges in its own reporting, the investigation is still ongoing.”

Several days after the strike, U.S. War Secretary Pete Hegseth said, “We’re investigating that. We, of course, never target civilian targets. But we’re taking a look and investigating that.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio stressed that American forces “would not deliberately target a school.”

“It will be very tragic, but I can’t speak to the details behind it because I just don’t have it. It will be a tragic outcome if it’s happened. I don’t have the details as to what led to it but what is clear is that the United States will not deliberately target a school,” Rubio said.