Earlier this week, the US defence secretary Pete Hegseth praised the “world-class” accuracy of US weaponry in destroying Iranian boats, rocket launchers and drone facilities.
“What it takes to do this, with the precision that we do, is world-class,” he said. “No one else can do it.”
Yet, in Iran, authorities say joint US-Israel strikes have targeted dozens of civilian locations, including hospitals, schools, residential areas, Tehran’s historic grand bazaar, the Azadi stadium and the Golestan Palace, a Unesco world heritage site.
These strikes are illegal unless involved with military action according to the laws of war.
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Last Saturday’s strike on the Shajarah Tayyebeh girls’ primary school in the southern town of Minab killed 168 and injured 95, the majority of whom were 12-year-old pupils.
Three bombs were dropped on the school during an attack on a nearby Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) naval base. The complex contains a barracks and associated buildings, a clinic, a pharmacy, and an auditorium, but not the school – which enrolled children from the community as well as the military – is in a walled-off compound.
The Iranian authorities had issued instructions for all schools to evacuate, but it is not clear whether Minab had received the warning in time, according to reports.
The UN education agency, Unesco, stated: “The killing of students in a place meant for learning constitutes a grave violation of the protection afforded to schools under international humanitarian law.”
Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei called the strike “deliberate” and said that the school was bombed to compel regional Iranian forces to focus on rescue efforts rather than defending the country.
As Israel has rejected involvement, the US has been left to face blame. At a press conference on Wednesday, Hegseth said: “All I know, all I can say, is that we’re investigating that. We, of course, never target civilian targets.”
Latest media reports on this investigation say it “points to likely US responsibility.”
The outcome will, inevitably, bring into focus what some experts call the myth of precision bombing. Similar claims were made in the last Gulf War. However, research by the Central Intelligence Agency and Defense Intelligence Agency later found that accuracy and damage assessments were inflated.
Thousands, meanwhile, attended the funeral on Tuesday of school victims who were laid in individual graves dug side by side, as shown in a video posted by Iranian media. Of the more than 1,300 people killed in the war so far, at least 181 are children.
The bombing has continued. US-Israeli strikes have targeted IRGC sites as well as civilian residential areas, car parks, petrol stations and buildings near Tehran University.
Air strikes targeted the Shia holy city of Qom as well as Shiraz, Isfahan and Kermanshah, where multiple missile bases are located.
The US military posted on X that Iranian targets were “being decimated by US forces, paving the way for continued delivery of overwhelming American military firepower”.
