As the death toll in Iran mounts, the Trump administration is increasingly trying to sidestep blame for any civilian deaths stemming from the conflict.
Mr. Trump has said it was his “opinion” that the Tomahawk missile that hit an Iranian elementary school, killing 175 people, had been fired by Iran — even though the U.S. military is the only force involved in the conflict known to have Tomahawk missiles.
“In my opinion, based on what I’ve seen, that was done by Iran,” Mr. Trump told reporters on Air Force One on Saturday, adding: “They’re very inaccurate, as you know, with their munitions. They have no accuracy whatsoever. It was done by Iran.”
The next day, to add to the messaging campaign, the Pentagon said that if there are more civilian deaths in Iran, they would be the fault of Iran’s government. More than 1,800 people have died in Iran and elsewhere in the war, including many civilians.
Sean Parnell, the chief spokesman for the Pentagon, said Tehran was growing “increasingly desperate, deliberately positioning missile and drone launchers in densely populated civilian neighborhoods, near distribution centers, and inside residential areas.”
“This is a blatant and intentional tactic: using innocent Iranian civilians as human shields,” Mr. Parnell wrote on social media. “We’ve seen this cowardly strategy before — it’s no accident.”
Taken together, the administration’s statements underscore a strategy to try to suggest America’s hands are clean from the deaths of civilians in the war.
But rather than ameliorating the situation, Mr. Trump’s attempts to cast all blame on Iran appear to have strengthened the likelihood the administration will be subjected to intense scrutiny.
Senator Brian Schatz, Democrat of Hawaii, who serves on the Foreign Relations Committee, called for an “independent investigation” into the school strike, “even though the commander in chief has polluted the waters with his unfounded accusation.”
“There is a mounting body of evidence that this was us,” he said. “We haven’t totally confirmed it yet, but if it’s true, it is one of the biggest mistakes that the United States military has made in generations, and one of the things that is supposed to distinguish us from other countries is our unwillingness to sweep bad news under the rug.”
Mr. Schatz also pointed to Mr. Hegseth’s comments at the start of the war in which he said the U.S. military wouldn’t abide by “stupid rules of engagement.”
“Pete Hegseth thinks that it is somehow wimpy to be precise in our targeting, and as a result, we very likely bombed a school,” he said.
A newly released video adds to the evidence suggesting that an American missile hit an Iranian elementary school where 175 people, many of them children, were reported killed.
The video, uploaded on Sunday by Iran’s semiofficial Mehr News Agency and verified by The New York Times, shows a Tomahawk cruise missile striking a naval base beside the school in the town of Minab on Feb. 28.
Mr. Trump on Monday tried to suggest that Iran might have gotten ahold of a Tomahawk missile and used it to kill its own people.
“The Tomahawk, which is one of the most powerful weapons around, is sold and used by other countries,” Mr. Trump said Monday.
He then appeared to alter his stance, saying that the missile could have been fired by Iran or another country but that he would defer to the findings of an investigation by the Pentagon.
“Whatever the report shows, I’m willing to live with that report,” he said.
Ryan Goodman, a law professor at New York University and former special counsel at the Department of Defense, said it was “highly improper” for the president to “float potential exonerating explanations during an ongoing investigation.” He compared the remarks to those initially made by Gen. Mark Milley in 2021 about a strike in Afghanistan, saying it was similarly inappropriate for the general to “make exonerating remarks about the Kabul strike that killed 10 civilians, including seven children, at the time of a pending investigation.”
Professor Goodman warned that Mr. Trump’s statements “may create undue interference because it puts pressure on military officials not to contradict the commander in chief.”
Jonathan Panikoff, director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative, said Mr. Trump’s statements about the missile strike shouldn’t affect the military’s process of carrying out a fair investigation.
But, he said, “I certainly think it becomes potentially more challenging for the final conclusions to be broadly accepted if you have the president ahead of time prejudging the outcome.”
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said on Tuesday that the Trump administration would release the full report of the Pentagon’s investigation into the attack after it was complete, and that the president would support whatever conclusions were reached.
But she argued that Mr. Trump should not be faulted for sharing his opinion that the strike was carried out by Iran.
“The president has a right to share his opinions with the American public, but he has said he’ll accept the conclusion of that investigation,” she said. “And frankly, we’re not going to be harassed by The New York Times, who has been putting out a lot of articles on this making claims that have just not been verified by the Department of War, to quickly wrap up this investigation.”
Luke Broadwater covers the White House for The Times.
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