Minab school bombing: what evidence is there that the US was responsible?

The bombing of the Shajareh Tayyebeh primary school in Minab on 28 February killed scores of people, most of them seven- to 12-year-old girls, and has been described by Unesco as a “grave violation” of international law.

“The bombing of a primary school in Minab on 28 February killed scores of people, most of them seven- to 12-year-old girls”

The Guardian

The president presented no evidence for his claim that the US was responsible.

The Guardian

His assertion has not been repeated by spokespeople for the US military, who have said only that they are “investigating” the bombing.

The Guardian frames the strike as the worst mass killing of the US and Israel’s war on Iran so far.

The school sat adjacent to a cluster of buildings forming the local Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) naval barracks and support buildings, a location the Guardian verified by cross-referencing videos with satellite imagery.

Historic satellite imagery shows the school has been walled off from the barracks for at least nine years and displayed visual indications of an educational facility, including colourful murals and small sports playing fields, with no indication it was a military-use building at the time of the strike.

The Guardian

Multiple verified videos—at least four—show the same site from different angles; one pans from the school rubble to thick smoke rising over the fence from the direction of the IRGC base.

Satellite imagery released on 4 March shows the destroyed school building and four other destroyed buildings in its immediate vicinity, all within the walls of the IRGC complex.

On 8 March Iranian state media Mehr news agency released a video of a missile hitting a Minab location that investigative collective Bellingcat geolocated to the IRGC compound next to the school, and munitions experts identified the missile as a Tomahawk.

“The bombing of a primary school in Minab on 28 February killed scores of people, most of them seven- to 12-year-old girls”

The Guardian

NR Jenzen-Jones of Armament Research Services said that identification “indicates it is a US strike, as Israel is not known to possess Tomahawk missiles,” and that the munition was not an Iranian Soumar missile.

On 10 March Iranian state media published photographs of what they said were missile fragments from the site showing labelling including the Globe Motors logo, Ball Aerospace and Technologies, and the words “Made in the USA,” which the Guardian cannot independently verify.

According to analysis by the New York Times, the serial numbers and labelling visible on the remains are consistent with how the Department of Defense and its suppliers label munitions, and munitions expert Trevor Ball identified the fragments as being the remains of a US Tomahawk missile.

The US has not explicitly admitted to striking the school or adjacent IRGC barracks, but said it was conducting strikes in the area and the Pentagon briefing led by Pete Hegseth on 4 March showed a graphic marking points of US/Israeli strikes during Operation Epic Fury that include a point corresponding to Minab.

That map also marks where “Iranian strikes” had taken place according to the US military, with none marked in the Minab area, and US/Israeli briefings said the US focused initial strikes along Iran’s southern coastline while Israel focused on the west.

The Guardian

Widely circulated images claiming the school was struck by a misfired Iranian missile were debunked: the photographs used as evidence were geolocated to Zanjan, roughly 994 miles (1,600km) away, with snow-covered mountains and signage inconsistent with Minab.

The president has not directly referenced the circulated image, and has provided no further evidence of a misfire.