US must admit responsibility for deadly airstrike on Iranian school if it was a mistake, says Republican
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A Republican senator says the U.S. should not pretend the Iranian school strike never happened, and admit a mistake if in fact the U.S. military was involved in the attack.
Sen. Thom Tillis told reporters Wednesday that he wants to see the final outcome of the investigation into the deadly February 28 attack, but said “the worst thing we can do, if, in fact, it was a negative result of the American strike, is to try to pretend it didn’t happen.”
A girls’ school in Minab was hit on the first day of the US-Israeli attack on Iran, killing at least 165 people – including at least 150 young students, according to Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, Ali Bahreini.
In the days since, US President Donald Trump has claimed without evidence that Iran was responsible for the strike, while his defense secretary and other US officials have insisted that the United States will not deliberately target civilians.
We shouldn’t hide it when we make a mistake,” said Tillis. “We have to accept it and move on.”
Tillis made the comments the same day Senate Democrats sent a letter to US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth demanding an “immediate investigation” into the air strike and any other actions by the US military that cause civilian casualties.
In a press conference on Monday, US President Donald Trump again suggested that Iran may be responsible for the deadly strike on a girls’ primary school in his country, and also suggested that another country may be involved. Newly released images show what a team of experts say may have been a US Tomahawk missile fired near the school.
Hegseth vows to return to ‘warrior ethos’
Almost every US Senate Democrat signed the letter sent to Hegseth.
“The results of this school attack are shocking. Most of those killed in the strikes were girls between seven and 12 years old. Neither the United States nor the Israeli government has taken responsibility for this attack,” said the letter, signed by 46 senators.
Only John Fetterman, a Democratic senator known for his outspoken views and occasional disdain for the party, did not sign.
When asked, Fetterman said he supports the military and Israel in this plan, known as Epic Fury.
“The United States never deliberately targets civilians, including its own citizens, unlike Iran. Everyone agrees that it was a tragedy. Everyone agrees to conduct a full investigation,” he said in an emailed statement.
Hegseth vowed to restore the “hero’s ethos” to the US military, and referred to the rules of engagement – the directives often given to soldiers during conflict – as “stupid” at a recent news conference.
The first internal military report points to the US
US media, including the New York Times and Reuters, report that the initial results of an internal investigation by the US military suggest that the deadly missile attack may have been the result of US use of outdated targeting data.
Two sources familiar with the matter spoke to Reuters on Wednesday, providing new details about what will be among the deadliest massacres in decades of US conflict.
According to archived copies of the school’s official website, the school is located near an area operated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a military force that reports to Iran’s supreme leader.
One of the sources, who spoke to Reuters about the initial report on the nature of the disclosure, said that the US officials responsible for creating the targeted packages appear to be using the intelligence of the past. A second source confirmed that outdated intelligence appears to have been used.
It is unclear how old data ended up being used in the strike and what, if any other factors, may have been responsible for the error.
In response to a request for comment on the findings so far, the Pentagon said only that “the incident remains under investigation.”
Video evidence
The CBC investigative team reported on March 4 that the attack appeared to be targeted and deliberate.
A a military researcher at Factnameh, an Iranian fact-checking group based out of Toronto, he told CBC News at the time the fact that the school was hit shows that it was “either a weapon system error or a major error [U.S. Central Command] done with intelligence collection.”
Although he talked about the strike on Monday, when he said without evidence that Iran has access to the American Tomahawk cruise missile likely to hit the school, Trump said he didn’t know enough about it to comment.
Asked Wednesday if he was involved in the air strike as commander-in-chief of the US military, Trump said, “I don’t know about it.”
In the days following the deadly strike on a girls’ school in Iran, no country has claimed responsibility. But there have been many competing reports about who hit the school, and whether it was intentional. CBC’s forensics team analyzed and verified video footage after the strike and new satellite images to piece together what happened.
Although no Republican Senators have signed the letter to Hegseth, Republican Senator John Kennedy said that all indications point to the US being the one involved in the strike.
“This is terrible,” Kennedy said. “And it looks like our missiles.”
Kennedy added that no matter how the US might respond to a strike, “children are still dead.”
“And I’m very sorry. But we’ll learn from it,” Kennedy said.
A deliberate attack on a school or hospital or any other public building may be considered a war crime under international humanitarian law.
