On the first day of the U.S. war in Iran, there was an apparent strike on an Iranian girls’ school that killed scores of children, and a Reuters report noted that U.S. military investigators “believe it is likely that U.S. forces were responsible for” the deadly incident.
While the Reuters report was not independently verified by MS NOW, it dovetailed with a detailed analysis from The New York Times that indicated the school building “was severely damaged by a precision strike that occurred at the same time as attacks on an adjacent naval base operated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.” On Monday morning, a related Times report elaborated, “A newly released video adds to the evidence that an American missile likely hit an Iranian elementary school where 175 people, many of them children, were reported killed.”
If these assessments hold, the strike on the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school building would rank among the worst cases of U.S.-caused civilian casualties in decades.
Over the course of the first week of the conflict, Donald Trump said effectively nothing about the deadly incident, but during a Q&A with reporters aboard Air Force One on the seventh day of the war, the president was asked whether the U.S. had bombed the school.
“No,” he replied. “No. In my opinion and based on what I’ve seen, that was done by Iran. … We think it was done by Iran.”
But then something interesting happened. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was standing next to the president when he blamed Iran, and a reporter asked, “Is that true, Mr. Hegseth? It was Iran who did that?”
The beleaguered Pentagon chief replied, “We’re certainly investigating.”
A day later, former White House national security adviser Mike Waltz, the current U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, was asked during appearances on NBC’s “Meet the Press” and ABC’s “This Week” whether it was Iran or the United States that struck the school. In both interviews, Waltz hedged, saying that an ongoing investigation would offer answers.
As a rule in this administration, there’s a straightforward model that officials are expected to follow: Trump makes a dubious claim, and those who serve at his pleasure endorse the accuracy of that claim, without regard for evidence or propriety, establishing a new version of reality for the White House and its allies.
But in this case, that hasn’t happened. Even the president’s sycophantic employees heard his claim but refused to back it, which speaks volumes about its reliability.
For his part, Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union” and told host Jake Tapper, in reference to the strike on the school, “I think it’s unforgivable under any circumstances. But the fact that this was one of our first targeting decisions, 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.”
