A New Report Reveals Key Details About the US’s Bombing of Minab School

On February 28, the first day of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, missiles landed on Shajareh Tayyebeh primary school in the Iranian city of Minab, in a civilian area near the Strait of Hormuz. At least 121 schoolchildren were killed along with 26 teachers. Forensic Architecture and Sky News analyzed the attack, finding that the neighborhood was bombed a second time while families and rescuers were still on the ground. The Trump administration has repeatedly refused to take responsibility for the school strike, with President Trump even suggesting that images of the destruction were AI-generated.

“There were images and videos available from the time of the strikes,” says Samaneh Moafi, assistant director of research at Forensic Architecture. “A second wave of strikes hit, and it’s in these ones that we do see the profile of a Tomahawk. And the only party within the war that has this missile is the U.S.”

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: The Trump administration has repeatedly refused to take responsibility for the school strike. President Trump recently appeared on Fox News and was questioned by Trey Yingst about the strike.

TREY YINGST: Democrats released a letter calling on your administration to unveil the findings of the investigation into a strike that killed more than a hundred children on the first day of the war. Will you commit to releasing the findings of this investigation?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, I’d have to speak to the generals that are doing the — because we mostly have generals. You know, I don’t think anybody’s going to ever be able to say what happened there.

TREY YINGST: There are images from this site that show fragments that appear to be from U.S. Tomahawk missiles. Is it possible that old intelligence or a mistake during a very active time in the war led to this event?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: It is, but it’s also possible that those images that you have are AI-generated. … Now, I know we’re waiting for a conclusive report. I don’t think there can be a conclusive report. There are missiles —

TREY YINGST: Will you release the report when it is finished?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I guess so. I mean, I have to ask the military people. There might be a reason why they can’t.

AMY GOODMAN: While President Trump claimed evidence of the school strike may be AI-generated, Forensic Architecture is out with a new report revealing new details about the U.S. bombing. Joining us from London will be a Forensic Architecture researcher. But first, Sky News recently released its own major report on the school strike, based in part on the research of Forensic Architecture. One mother, Khadija Ahmedizadeh, spoke to Sky News about her son Mohammad Taha, who died in the attack.

KHADIJA AHMEDIZADEH: [translated] I collapsed onto the ground on my hands and knees. I said, “Mohammad Taha will choke. For God’s sake, pull him out quickly.” I picked up a stone and said, “I’ll kill myself with this if you don’t bring my son out, quickly, before he chokes!”

It was one month after. We were told that Mohammad Taha had been found. I thought they would show him to me. But when we went, I saw that a child I had raised for 10 years with so much effort was now reduced to the size of a newborn baby, wrapped in a shroud. They gave him to me and said, “Here, this is your child.” I didn’t see my child’s face again.

After one month, Mohammad Taha was laid to rest next to his classmates. I spent that whole night at the cemetery. I was scared. Mohammad Taha was afraid of the dark, too.

They tore my son to pieces. What should I do now? Who am I supposed to hold responsible for this? Who do I have any power over?

Read more Hegseth: “Greatest Threat” to US Would Be Failing to Give Pentagon $1.5T Budget

AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined now in London by Samaneh Moafi, assistant director of research at Forensic Architecture, the new report titled “Airstrikes on Minab Primary School.”

This is very painful, Samaneh, because we’re talking about real life. We’re talking about well over 160 children and some adults who were killed on that first day when the U.S. struck Minab. You also hear President Trump saying, “We don’t know actually what happened,” as he’s questioned by Fox, and it may be “AI-generated.” You have done the research. What exactly did you find?

SAMANEH MOAFI: I want to take one step before, and I want to talk about where Minab is. Minab is in the south of Iran along the Strait of Hormuz. The war in 2026 started from the very site where the Iran-Iraq War was brought to an end. In 1988, the United States had escalated its military operations against the oil infrastructure and naval bases in Iran. And amongst those strikes, it also shut down an Iranian passenger flight by the Strait of Hormuz and attributed it to a misidentification. All 290 passengers on that flight were killed. This is why, for many Iranians, the attack on Shajareh Tayyebeh primary school echoed the downing of that passenger flight 38 years earlier. It was a nation’s trauma being relived. Some of the preliminary reports had said that the attack on the school, like the passenger flight, was the result of a misidentification, a targeting mistake.

In our investigation, we used satellite imagery to show that at the time of the attack, the building was a school and had served that purpose for over a decade. By October 2015, all architectural indicators of military presence, a watchtower or anything, were destroyed. And new entrances were built. New perimeter walls were built around the school. By 2017, we see a football pitch and assembly lines being painted on the playgrounds. By 2018, we see the walls being painted in blue and pink to identify the girls’ school and the boys’ school. We see children playing in the playgrounds of these — in the satellite imagery. We were able to verify also that many of the buildings in the immediate surrounding of the school were visibly civilian — a clinic, a cultural center, a cafe, a supermarket, a car wash. Many of these facilities maintained active social media accounts, so they were publishing and posting about what is happening in them. Some of these were used by the school. The culture center was — offered space for children for their ceremonies, award ceremonies, so on and so forth.

It’s true that, you know, during the Iran-Iraq War, this site was used as a military base. In the 1980s, CIA documents also refer to a possible military support facility in Minab, laying the ground kind of for like a target, you know? But the Sky News documentary that featured this investigation showed that these targets had not been checked properly for years and years.

I can also tell you how further we went. We looked into the photographs and videos that were published on the school’s website, publicly. These were images of ceremonies, say, the Mother’s Day ceremony, the Nowruz celebrations that marked the new year, the book fairs. We use these images and videos to reconstruct the building of the school as a kind of a navigable 3D model. Some of these images belong to January, only a few weeks before the strikes had happened. Some of the children we saw in those images — Mohammad Taha was one of them — were killed during the strike. The digital model that we built went into as much detail as interior finishes of every single classroom, the decorations on the walls, the bright paint on the staircase that linked the assembly hall of the boys’ school on the ground floor to the girls’ school on the top floor. We checked every room. There was no hidden room for any kind of a use. It was a school for — you know, for children.

AMY GOODMAN: And if you can say — apparently, this according to CNN, the investigation into the U.S. strike that hit the school in Iran has sat for months with the military command, while leaders have held off on ordering a critical standard intelligence review. And we also know about the cutting of the agencies that would review the target sites. In this last minute we have, Samaneh Moafi, the most important evidence you felt you had concluding it was a U.S. Tomahawk missile?

SAMANEH MOAFI: We looked at images. There were images and videos available from the time of the strikes. The first nine strikes started at around 11:20 and across one-and-a-half minute. The first strike landed only 130 meters away from the school. The fourth strike landed 10 seconds after on the school. Mohammad Taha, the 9-year-old you were mentioning in the beginning, was playing in the schoolyard when the first strike begins, and he rushes to the safety of his classroom. And that’s when the school is hit.

Videos of the aftermath of these strikes show that families are on site. Aid workers are on site. They’re rescuing the children under the rubble. These images are from 12:30, 1:15 p.m., like around noon. A number of children were rescued at this time. Parastesh Zaeri, the 11-year-old child, was amongst them. From as early as 1:45, or around that time, multiple Iranian news channels are reporting on the attacks. They’re saying this was — there was an attack on a girls’ school. They’re saying there was death toll of five children, there is more coming, so on and so forth.

AMY GOODMAN: We have 30 seconds.

SAMANEH MOAFI: As families and rescuers are on site, a second wave of strikes are hit. And it’s in these ones that we do see the profile of a Tomahawk. And this is owned — the only party within the war that has this missile is the U.S. Following the initial media reportings, the U.S. forces would have had ample opportunity to reassess their initial misidentification before conducting the next round of strikes. But it’s simple: They didn’t.

AMY GOODMAN: Samaneh Moafi, I want to say thank you very much for being with us, assistant director of research at Forensic Architecture. We’ll link to your new report, “Airstrikes on Minab Primary School.”

That does it for our show. I’ll be in Martha’s Vineyard for the screening of Steal This Story, Please!, July 31st. I’m Amy Goodman.

Read more Smotrich Says US Fighting Iran as Israel Sits Back Is “Best for Us”