American forces were responsible for a strike on an Iranian girls’ school that killed at least 150 students and staff, according to a preliminary assessment by U.S. military investigators.
Two U.S. officials told Reuters that investigators believe the deadly strike on the Shajareye Tayabeh girls’ school in Minab, Hormozgan Province, was launched by American forces after Donald Trump ordered the launch of “major combat operations” against Iran on Saturday.
The sources described the assessment as tentative and said additional evidence could still emerge that might identify another party as responsible.
The school was struck as the U.S. and Israel launched combined attacks across Iran on Saturday as part of a large-scale operation that has killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and dozens of top officials.
But as questions mounted over the strike that killed scores of students, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth publicly boasted about the scale and lethality of the military campaign.
He told reporters on Monday that “We fight to win” and “We don’t waste time or lives.”
Hegseth also warned that civilian casualties were inevitable.
“As the president warned, an effort of this scope will include casualties. War is hell and always will be,” he said.
“America, regardless of what so-called international institutions say, is unleashing the most lethal and precise air power campaign in history: B-2s, fighters, drones, missiles, and of course classified effects. All on our terms with maximum authorities,” Hegseth went on.
“No stupid rules of engagement, no nation-building quagmire, no democracy-building exercise, no politically correct wars,” the Pentagon chief added.
Separate analysis by The New York Times, published Thursday, reported that 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 (IRGC).
The newspaper reported that official U.S. statements confirmed American forces were targeting naval assets near the Strait of Hormuz, where the IRGC base is located.
American forces “were most likely to have carried out the strike,” the Times reported.
Iran’s state-run Islamic Republic News Agency initially reported Saturday that Israel carried out the strike.
Hegseth has so far avoided confirming whether the U.S. was responsible for the strike. When pressed by reporters on Wednesday about the incident, he said the Pentagon was “investigating.”
Under international humanitarian law, deliberately attacking a school, hospital, or other civilian structure would likely constitute a war crime.
If U.S. responsibility were confirmed, Reuters reported that the strike would rank among the worst cases of civilian casualties in decades of U.S. conflicts in the Middle East.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House and the Pentagon for comment.
The strikes marked the second U.S. attack on Iran in the past year, following a June 2025 operation targeting Iranian nuclear facilities.
President Donald Trump has offered shifting explanations for his decision to strike Iran. He initially said Tehran was preparing to strike U.S. bases. However, Trump administration officials later told congressional staffers in closed-door briefings that there was no intelligence pointing toward imminent Iranian strikes.
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