The School in Minab

On the first day of the war, a girls' school in Minab, southern Iran, was hit by an airstrike. At least 150 students were killed — some reports say 165. Their coffins, small and draped in Iranian flags, were passed across a crowd toward the grave site on state television two days later.

For nearly a week, no one took responsibility. Iran blamed the US and Israel. The Pentagon said it was "investigating." Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters on Wednesday: "We, of course, never target civilian targets." Secretary of State Rubio said the United States "would not deliberately target a school."

Then, late Thursday, Reuters reported what the hedging had been hiding: US military investigators believe it is likely that US forces were responsible for the strike.

The investigation isn't finished. The officials who spoke to Reuters "did not rule out the possibility that new evidence could emerge that absolves the U.S." But the trajectory is clear. US and Israeli forces divided their targets geographically — Israel struck western Iran, the US struck the south. Minab is in the south. The school was near a naval base that was a US target. A New York Times analysis corroborated the proximity.

What this means

If confirmed, this would be among the worst cases of civilian casualties in decades of US military operations in the Middle East. Deliberately targeting a school is a war crime under international humanitarian law. The Pentagon will argue it was not deliberate — collateral damage from strikes on a nearby military target. That distinction matters legally. It matters far less to the families preparing graves for their daughters.

The White House response is already rehearsed. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt: "The Iranian regime targets civilians and children, not the United States of America." This framing — the enemy does the bad thing, we do not — is not a response to the evidence. It's a refusal to engage with it.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has called for a "prompt, transparent and impartial investigation," and reminded all parties that "the onus is on the forces that carried out the attack to investigate it." The US is now in the position of investigating itself for a strike it spent five days denying.

The context that makes it worse

This news broke on the same day that IDF Chief Zamir announced the "next phase" of the Iran campaign and Hegseth promised firepower would "surge dramatically." Fifty Israeli fighter jets just dropped approximately 100 bombs on a site beneath Iran's "leadership complex" in Tehran — spread across multiple streets with "many entry points." Iran's death toll has risen to over 1,200.

The campaign is intensifying while the accountability for its first atrocity hasn't even been established. The school in Minab will not slow anything down. It will be absorbed into the noise of the war and invoked by both sides for opposite purposes. Iran will use it to justify continued resistance. The US will call it regrettable, investigate itself, and release a report months from now when no one is watching.

Wars are defined by moments like this. Not by the phase transitions or the tonnage of ordnance, but by the specific, irreversible thing that happened to specific people. 150 girls went to school on February 28 and did not come home.