An alleged missile strike hit an elementary school at Shajarah Tayyebeh, Iran, on February 28. Everything we know about the attack comes from Iranian sources with no neutral investigation or fact-finding. Yet the New York Times is going full bore "Covington Kids" on the issue. In my view, this attack is nothing more than a stalking horse aimed at reimposing the crazy, stupid, hyper-legal rules that cost us two defeats. They are also aimed at discrediting Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and his push to give the men at the pointy end of the spear the ability to fight without waiting for some Eugene Vindman type to get off the toilet and make a ruling.
This is how The New York Times describes it:
The Feb. 28 strike on the elementary school building was the result of a targeting mistake by the U.S. military, which was conducting strikes on an adjacent Iranian base of which the school building was formerly a part, the preliminary investigation found. Officers at U.S. Central Command created the target coordinates for the strike using outdated data provided by the Defense Intelligence Agency, people briefed on the investigation said.
Officials emphasized that the findings are preliminary and that there are important unanswered questions about why the outdated information had not been double checked.
Striking a school full of children is sure to be recorded as one of the most devastating single military errors in recent decades. Iranian officials have said the death toll was at least 175 people, most of them children.
Let's review the bidding on what we know. There. We're finished. That's it. That's all we know.
But let's look at what we're supposed to believe.
The Iranian government press produced an image of an alleged Tomahawk cruise missile moments before it hit a target. At that time, smoke could be seen rising from the alleged school site. From that, we're supposed to believe it was a U.S. strike.
New video footage shows a US Tomahawk missile hitting an IRGC facility in Minab, Iran, on Feb 28, showing for the first time that the US struck the area. The footage also shows smoke already rising from the vicinity of the girls’ school, where 175 people were reportedly killed. pic.twitter.com/4jBXrNcRJO
— Trevor Ball (@Easybakeovensz) March 8, 2026
There is no way to determine if this is real or AI slop. Even if it is real, it means that an IRGC base was hit, which is sort of the point of why we're shooting missiles.
The Iranian government claims a death toll of "at least 175 people, most of them children." No neutral observer has seen the bodies or counted them. When a neutral party did some research, they found many of the alleged victims had no record at the school.
¹ A couple of days ago, Tehran Times published a list of 100 children supposedly killed in the Minab school strike.
— Mark Zlochin - מארק זלוצ'ין༝ (@MarkZlochin) March 11, 2026
But a closer examination of the names raises serious questions about the list’s authenticity. 🧵 https://t.co/xpw7bMKt7v pic.twitter.com/9BKarmKyVJ
The Iranian government has also produced what it claims to be images of missile fragments from the school. We don't have video of the fragments being discovered. There is no verifiable chain of custody. And I'm not surprised that there are Tomahawk missile fragments strewn all across Iran. What these don't prove is that they came from the school. I'd also note that, as of now, no images of the point of impact have been displayed; that is something one would expect to see.
Analysis of missile debris shown by Iran found components marked “Made in USA” and parts from U.S. manufacturers, consistent with a U.S.-made Tomahawk cruise missile.
— Clash Report (@clashreport) March 10, 2026
The evidence suggests the Feb. 28 strike that destroyed a school in Minab and killed ~175 people came from U.S.… pic.twitter.com/bsWyVXUpUv
There have been other objections to the image in the video, leading one to believe it is AI slop.
This video is an obvious fake to anyone who actually has any idea what they are looking at.
— J.T. Alexander (@JTAlexander_) March 8, 2026
TLAMs are 18' long and impact targets at ~550MPH. They carry either an HE, Anti-Ship, Cluster, or Nuclear Warhead.
This video depicts an approximately ~30' object traveling far below… https://t.co/bhQXBV6O0T
What we can never forget is the nature of the people we are fighting. In 1978, agents of the Islamic revolution that drove the Shah of Iran from power, chained the doors of the Cinema Rex in Abadan, Iran, together and set it on fire. The fire killed an estimated 470 people. The allies of Ayatollah Khomeini then blamed the atrocity on SAVAK, the Shah's secret police.
President Trump expressed an opinion that the Iranians might have been behind the attack. Given their history and operating methods, we can't rule that out without an impartial investigation.
The New York Times continues:
While the overall finding was largely expected — the United States is the only country involved in the conflict that uses Tomahawk missiles — it has already cast a shadow on the U.S. military operation in Iran.
President Trump’s attempts to sidestep the blame for the strike have also already complicated the inquiry, leaving officials who have reviewed the findings showing U.S. culpability expressing unease. The people interviewed for this story spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing the sensitive nature of the ongoing investigation and Mr. Trump’s assertion at one point that Iran, not the United States, was responsible.
The article then goes on to lay out a sequence of events dating back to 2013 that led to the alleged error.
The school, in the town of Minab, is on the same block as buildings used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Navy, a top target of the U.S. military strikes. The site of the school was originally part of the base. Officials briefed on the inquiry said the building was not always used as a school, though it is not clear precisely when the school opened on the site.
A visual investigation by The Times showed the building housing the school had been fenced off from the military base between 2013 and 2016.
Satellite imagery reviewed by The Times showed that watchtowers that once stood near the building had been removed, three public entrances were opened to the school, ground was cleared and play areas including a sports field were painted on asphalt, and walls were painted blue and pink.
The “target coding” provided by the Defense Intelligence Agency, the military intelligence agency that helps develops targets, labeled the school building as a military target when it was passed to Central Command, the military headquarters overseeing the war, according to people briefed on the preliminary findings of the investigation.
Investigators do not yet fully understand how the outdated data was sent to Central Command or whether the Defense Intelligence Agency had updated information.
To be clear, sh** happens during war. People who weren't targeted get killed. If this attack happened as described, and in my mind that is a huge "if" at this stage, we need to own the mistake. What we can't let happen is that one mishap, tragic as that may be, out of over 400 missile strikes, change the way we fight the war. That, unfortunately, is what The New York Times and other outlets are after. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has unleashed warfighters to do their job, and that is why the Iran attack has unfolded as it has. That vision, however, is a threat to the academics and lawyers who have become accustomed to inserting their fat, pimply butts into combat operations.
Hegseth: "The dumb, politically correct wars of the past were the opposite of what we're doing here. They had vague objections with restrictive, minimalist rules of engagement. No more." pic.twitter.com/WYVWye1Wol
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 5, 2026
Take, for instance, Politico's "Hegseth gutted offices that would have probed Iran school strike - POLITICO."
The Pentagon chief last year slashed offices that didn’t contribute to his goal of “lethality,” including the group that assists in limiting risk to civilians, known as the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence. Around 200 employees who worked on the issue, including at that office, have been reduced by about 90 percent, according to two current and former officials and a person familiar with the effort. The team that handles civilian casualties at Central Command, which oversees the Middle East, has dropped from 10 to one.
To be clear, we had 200 people in the Pentagon devoted to limiting risks to civilians? How the hell does that even work? Why would we want that to exist?
“The fact that our secretary of Defense, that our Central Command commander, cannot actually tell us whether or not they dropped a bomb in this location, that is so unbelievably unacceptable,” said Wes Bryant, the Pentagon’s former chief of civilian harm assessments until last year. “It just points even more to recklessness in this, in the entire planning and execution of this campaign, the fact that they don’t have any idea.”
Hegseth has said no other country takes as many precautions to ensure the U.S. is not targeting civilians. But the Pentagon chief, who has long derided the use of laws in war, this week called military rules of engagement “stupid.”
“We untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt and kill the enemies of our country,” he said at a Tuesday press conference on the U.S.-Israeli military operation. “No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement, just common sense, maximum lethality and authority for warfighters.”
Call me reckless, but I don't care. As far as I'm concerned, so long as we aren't deliberately targeting civilians, I'm fine.
The bottom line is that none of the people getting their panties twisted over this alleged attack really care about the attack. They care about using that attack as the starting point for a narrative aimed at bringing military operations back under the control of people who don't care about war and only care about rules. In Iraq and Afghanistan, we had rules of engagement that permitted firing only if the enemy fired first. Those rules killed and maimed a lot of young men and women as surely as the jihadis and Taliban who were attacking them.
If a team of neutral investigators visits the site and determines the allegations to be true, I'm fine with apologizing and promising to be more careful in the future. What we can't let happen is for the way we are fighting this war to be changed by unsubstantiated allegations from the people we are fighting.
Editor's Note: This article was updated post-publication for clarity.
For decades, former presidents have been all talk and no action. Now, Donald Trump is eliminating the threat from Iran once and for all.
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