Outdated Intelligence, 175 Dead: How a U.S. Tomahawk Missile Struck an Iranian Girls' School

On the morning of February 28, 2026 — the first day of the U.S.-Israel military campaign against Iran — a Tomahawk cruise missile slammed into the Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school in the southern city of Minab. The building was full of girls aged seven to twelve. By the time the dust settled, at least 175 people were dead, most of them children. It was the single deadliest civilian incident of the war [1][2].

Now, a preliminary Pentagon investigation has confirmed what photographic evidence, satellite imagery, and weapons experts had been indicating for days: the United States fired the missile that destroyed the school [3]. The cause, according to sources briefed on the inquiry, was a "targeting error" — U.S. Central Command struck the building using coordinates derived from outdated Defense Intelligence Agency data that still classified the school as part of an adjacent Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps naval base [4][5].

The revelation has sent shockwaves through Washington, drawn bipartisan condemnation in Congress, prompted calls for war crimes investigations from international human rights organizations, and raised urgent questions about the Trump administration's decision to dramatically scale back the Pentagon's civilian casualty prevention infrastructure just months before launching a major war.

What Happened at Shajareh Tayyebeh

The strikes against Iran began in the early hours of February 28, with U.S. and Israeli forces launching nearly 900 strikes in 12 hours targeting Iranian missiles, air defenses, military infrastructure, and leadership [6]. Among the targets was the Sayyid al-Shuhada military complex in Minab, which housed the headquarters of the Asif Brigade of the IRGC Navy.

The Shajareh Tayyebeh girls' elementary school sat adjacent to that base. In fact, the building had once been part of the military compound itself. But satellite imagery analyzed by CNN, Al Jazeera, and independent researchers shows that between 2013 and 2016, the school was physically walled off from the base — a fence was erected, military watchtowers near the building were removed, and three separate public entrances were constructed [7][8]. By 2016, the school was, in the words of Al Jazeera investigators, "a clearly defined civilian institution" that had been separated from the military complex for more than a decade [9].

Saturday is a working day in Iran, and the strikes began around 10:00 a.m. local time — when the school was full of students [10]. What followed was described by medics and witnesses as a "double-tap" or even "triple-tap" attack: the school was struck by multiple missiles in succession [11].

According to accounts gathered by Middle East Eye and corroborated by the Iranian Ministry of Education, after the first missile hit, the school's principal moved surviving students into a prayer room and began calling parents to come collect their children [11][12]. A second strike then hit that area, killing most of those who had taken shelter. One parent told reporters he received a phone call from the school after the first blast informing him his daughter had survived; before he could arrive, the school was struck again, and she was killed [12].

Iranian authorities have put the final death toll at between 165 and 180, with 168 children and 14 teachers among the dead [2][10].

The Intelligence Failure

The preliminary Pentagon investigation, the findings of which were first reported by the New York Times and NPR on March 11, traces the catastrophe to a specific failure in the U.S. military's targeting process [3][4].

U.S. Central Command officers created target coordinates for the Minab strikes using data provided by the Defense Intelligence Agency. That data still identified the school building as part of the IRGC naval base — a designation that had been accurate a decade earlier but was no longer current [5]. Investigators have not yet determined whether the DIA possessed updated information that failed to reach CENTCOM, or whether the agency's records had simply never been corrected [4].

"In a fast-moving situation, like the opening days of a war, information is sometimes not verified," one source briefed on the investigation told reporters [5].

The investigation is expected to take months and will include interviews with everyone involved in the targeting chain, from intelligence analysts and planners to commanders and those who physically executed the strike [3].

Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration

Data as of Mar 9, 2026CSV

The Gutted Safeguards

The school strike did not occur in a vacuum of institutional failure. It came against a backdrop of deliberate decisions by the Trump administration to dismantle the very mechanisms designed to prevent exactly this kind of tragedy.

After a series of devastating civilian casualty incidents in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria — including the 2017 Mosul airstrike that killed over 100 civilians and the 2019 Baghuz strike — Congress passed legislation in 2019 directing the Pentagon to take concrete steps to reduce civilian harm [13]. During the Biden administration, the Department of Defense responded by creating the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response (CHMR) initiative, building dedicated teams whose job was to work alongside military commanders during target planning to verify that targets were actually military sites and to assess the risk of civilian casualties [13].

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth dismantled much of that infrastructure after taking office. According to a ProPublica investigation, the civilian protection mission was dissolved as Hegseth made "lethality" a top priority for the Department of Defense. The civilian mitigation teams were cut by approximately 90 percent [13]. By the time the Iran war began on February 28, U.S. Central Command — the combatant command responsible for all U.S. military operations in the Middle East — had only a single staffer assigned to civilian casualty mitigation operations [3][13].

The ProPublica report detailed how key personnel who had built the civilian protection program were forced out of government in budget cuts the previous spring. The institutional knowledge they carried about preventing targeting errors — the exact kind of knowledge that might have caught the outdated coordinates for the Minab school — went with them [13].

Congressional Response

The preliminary findings have drawn rare bipartisan condemnation on Capitol Hill.

More than 45 Democratic senators signed a letter to Secretary Hegseth demanding answers about the strike, pressing on whether the U.S. was culpable and what analysis of the school building had been conducted prior to the attack [14].

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) called the strike "unforgivable under any circumstances," adding that "the fact that this mistake was made on the first day of war, I think, speaks to the incompetence of our leadership at the Department of Defense" [15].

But the criticism has not been limited to Democrats. Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) called it "a terrible, terrible mistake" [16]. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said "the worst thing we can do, if, in fact, it was a horrible outcome from an American strike, is to try to pretend that it didn't happen. We shouldn't gloss over it if we made a mistake. We should admit it and move on" [14]. Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) called for the investigation to "get to the bottom of it" and then "admit if you know whose fault it is" [14].

President Trump, when asked about the preliminary findings, claimed ignorance of the specific incident [17].

International Outcry and War Crimes Allegations

Human Rights Watch issued a statement on March 7 calling for the school attack to be investigated as a war crime, noting that schools are civilian objects protected from attack under international humanitarian law [18]. The organization found no evidence that the school was being used for military purposes at the time of the strike.

"A prompt and thorough investigation is needed into this attack, including whether those responsible should have known that a school was there and that it would be full of children and teachers," said Sophia Jones of HRW's Digital Investigations Lab [18].

UN human rights experts issued a separate statement strongly condemning the missile strike and calling for an independent international investigation [19]. Their statement emphasized that the principle of distinction — the obligation to distinguish between military and civilian objects — is a cornerstone of international humanitarian law, and that failures to exercise due diligence in targeting can constitute war crimes.

The broader U.S.-Israel military campaign has drawn similar scrutiny. Iran has accused the coalition of striking nearly 10,000 civilian sites across the country, with total civilian casualties exceeding 1,300 since the war began [6]. The strikes have damaged schools, hospitals, Tehran's Grand Bazaar, and the historic Golestan Palace, a UNESCO World Heritage Site [6].

The Broader War

The school strike is the deadliest single incident in a conflict that has escalated rapidly since February 28. The opening U.S.-Israel assault targeted Iranian missile systems, air defenses, and leadership — including a strike on the compound known as Leadership House that killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, along with members of his family [6][20].

Iran has responded with over 500 ballistic and naval missiles and nearly 2,000 drones, striking U.S. military positions in the region. Seven American service members have died in the conflict so far, including troops killed in an Iranian attack on forces stationed in Saudi Arabia [21].

Source: U.S. Department of Defense / Fortune

Data as of Mar 8, 2026CSV

The conflict has roiled global energy markets. WTI crude oil prices, which had been trading in the low-to-mid $60s per barrel through most of February, spiked to $71.13 on the first trading day after strikes began and have continued climbing — reaching $94.65 per barrel by March 9, a roughly 45 percent increase in less than two weeks [22].

Shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, through which approximately 20 percent of the world's oil passes daily, has been severely disrupted, with cargo ships coming under attack from both sides of the conflict [1].

The Accountability Question

The Minab school strike now stands as a defining test of accountability in the 2026 Iran war. The Pentagon's own preliminary investigation has acknowledged U.S. responsibility — a relatively unusual admission in the early days of an active conflict. But the question of what accountability looks like remains open.

The investigation is expected to examine the full targeting chain: how the DIA's outdated data was generated, whether updated information existed, how CENTCOM processed the coordinates, and whether any human review occurred that might have caught the error. It will also likely scrutinize whether the gutting of the civilian harm mitigation teams contributed to the failure [3][13].

For critics, the answer is already clear. The school strike was not simply a technological or intelligence failure — it was a foreseeable consequence of deliberate policy choices to prioritize "lethality" over civilian protection, to strip the Pentagon of the institutional safeguards that existed precisely to prevent this kind of disaster, and then to launch a major war under those degraded conditions.

For the families of 168 schoolgirls in Minab, the policy debates in Washington are an abstraction. What is concrete is the rubble of a building that was, until 10:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning, a place where their daughters learned to read.