CNN’s sources say that shortly after Washington’s attack on Iran’s Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school U.S. military officials knew it was based on badly outdated targeting information, Brad Reed reports.
A U.S. destroyer firing a Tomahawk missile on Feb. 28 at the start of the Trump administration’s unauthorized war on Iran. (DoD/Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain)
By Brad Reed
Common Dreams
U.S. military commanders “bypassed warnings” indicating that their database of strike targets inside Iran was badly out of date shortly before launching a deadly attack on an Iranian primary school in the city of Minab, according to a report from CNN.
Three sources told the network that senior military officials received messages informing them that the intelligence behind the target list had been gathered years ago and “needed to be re-vetted.”
Regardless, the proposed Iranian targets were added to a strike list shortly before the U.S. launched an attack on the Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School, killing more than 150 schoolchildren along with over a dozen teachers.
Two of CNN’s sources said senior commanders ignored the warnings out of “expediency,” as they did not want to significantly delay providing target lists during the outset of the war, which Trump illegally launched in February without any authorization from the U.S. Congress.
For months, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has repeatedly dodged questions about the strike on the school, insisting that he didn’t want to comment on an ongoing Pentagon investigation.
However, one of CNN’s sources said that US military officials “knew within days how the mistake happened,” as the school was targeted based on “obviously old info.”
Hegseth during a Pentagon press briefing on the U.S, unauthorized war on Iran on March 4. (DoW/Alexander Kubitza)
CNN noted that old satellite images showed the school once belonged to the same compound as an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps facility. However, as long ago as 2016, images showed “that a fence had been erected to separate the school from the rest of the base, and that a separate entrance to the school had been built.”
Rutgers Law School Professor Adil Haque, noting that intelligence on many of the targets was more than a decade old, called the U.S. decision to proceed with attacks “inexcusable.”
The U.S. Department of Defense has still not released its investigation into the bombing, drawing criticism from Palestinian-American policy analyst Yousef Munayyer, who reacted to Tuesday’s CNN report by describing the U.S. military as being “quick to bomb, slow to investigate.”
Recovery workers in the rubble of the Shajareh Tayyebeh school in Minab, Iran, after U.S. forces struck it on Feb. 28. (Mehr News Agency /Wikimedia Commons/ CC BY 4.0)
The slow pace of the investigation has also drawn criticism from Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee.
During a May congressional hearing, Smith grilled Adm. Brad Cooper about why the US hasn’t taken responsibility for the school strike despite clear evidence that it was at fault.
“In the past, when we’ve had these type of mistakes, they’ve been quickly acknowledged,” Smith said, “even if a further investigation is necessary to figure out prevention methods.”
Smith also criticized Hegseth for showing a “callous disregard for any sort of rules of engagement or protecting of civilian life” during his tenure as defense secretary.
Last month, President Donald Trump brushed off responsibility for the strike on the school, stating that “mistakes are made” and “war is nasty.”
Brad Reed is a staff writer for Common Dreams.
This article is from Common Dreams.
The views expressed in this article and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
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