Pentagon probe points to U.S. missile hitting Iranian school
Updated March 11, 20265:07 PM ET
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LEILA FADEL, HOST:

A preliminary assessment by the Pentagon has determined the U.S. is at fault for a missile strike on a school in Iran on the first day of the war. The attack killed at least 165 civilians, mostly children, according to Iranian officials.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

We have a description of the U.S. investigation findings from a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity because they're not authorized to speak publicly. NPR's Kat Lonsdorf is here. Kat, good morning.

KAT LONSDORF, BYLINE: Hey. Good morning.

INSKEEP: What is this investigation?

LONSDORF: So now the Pentagon has opened what's called a 15-6 investigation to determine not if the U.S. did this, but how the mistake happened, and also confirmed that it was indeed civilians who were killed. That's expected to take months. In a statement, the White House reiterated to NPR that the investigation is ongoing and, quote, "the United States does not target civilians." But if this is all confirmed, Steve, it would make this one of the highest, if not the highest, number of civilians killed by the U.S. in a single incident in 35 years.

INSKEEP: Granting that they're still investigating, how could this have happened?

LONSDORF: Well, NPR was the first to report that the strike on the school was part of a larger precision strike on a compound of buildings and was likely the result of outdated intelligence. Our colleague Geoff Brumfiel reported that a previous map of targets in Iran showed that the building housing the school was once part of an Iranian Revolutionary Guard naval base in the southern city of Minab. But somewhere between 2013 and 2016, the school was separated and walled off from that base, according to satellite imagery that we've reviewed.

INSKEEP: Ah. It just makes you cringe to think about it.

LONSDORF: Yeah.

INSKEEP: And then there's these videos, which appear to show a Tomahawk missile hitting the compound. What do you learn from that?

LONSDORF: Yeah. Iran also published images of parts of the missile it says struck the school. Those appear to have come from a Tomahawk as well. Tomahawks are U.S.-made missiles and only a handful of countries, including the U.S., use them. A few days ago, President Trump suggested the Tomahawks are, quote, "generic" and may have come from Iran. That's not possible. Several munitions experts we talked to have said the U.S. is the only actor in this war using Tomahawk missiles.

INSKEEP: Kat, what does it mean that last year sometime, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth made a cut - major cuts to an office that was in charge of what they call civilian harm...

LONSDORF: Yeah.

INSKEEP: ...Mitigation - trying to avoid civilian casualties?

LONSDORF: Yeah. I mean, Steve, as you know, there have unfortunately been many other civilian casualty incidents in previous wars and administrations. And those are hopefully mistakes that the U.S. can learn from. A few years ago, Congress mandated an office in the Pentagon to do just that. But shortly after Hegseth took office, he cut it by about 90%. He also fired a lot of military lawyers. Here's what Oona Hathaway, a professor of international law at Yale Law School, told me.

OONA HATHAWAY: At every level, civilian protection has been deprioritized. But a modern army has to fight according to the law, and the law requires that you protect civilians.

LONSDORF: That same U.S. official who told us about the preliminary assessment also told NPR that now all of U.S. Central Command has only one staffer assigned to civilian casualty mitigation operations. We reached out to the Pentagon about this, but didn't get a response. And I want to be clear, Steve. We can't say that this strike was a direct result of these cuts. Civilians are, unfortunately, always the worst and most affected in modern war.

INSKEEP: Yeah. And in recent wars, U.S. military officials felt that mitigating civilian casualties was an important part of the war because there's an information war - a war for hearts and minds. You don't want to lose people's support.

NPR's Kat Lonsdorf, thanks so much.

LONSDORF: Thank you.