The question about whether US launched the missiles is not really in dispute, the intent and knowledge is in dispute. NYT did a great analysis essentially concluding it was plausibly a mistake, not an intentional or indiscriminate civilian attack.
More here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49739018#49741081
The US military and its sailors already showed me everything i wont to know about them when i saw the report on them shooting torpedoes at capsized boats.
I guess the trick for me is (1) convincing others and (2) convincing others to give a shit.
> The UN mission concluded that the strike on Shajareh Tayyebeh primary school constituted an indiscriminate attack causing civilian deaths and damage to civilian infrastructure, amounting to a war crime under international law.
> According to the report, the US relied on intelligence suggesting a senior Iranian military commander was present at the site but failed to adequately verify the information before launching the strike.
> Investigators said the failure to update targeting intelligence and confirm the building was a military objective amounted to more than mere negligence.
> “Rather, the US directed the strikes at the building of the school while being aware of a substantial risk of striking a civilian object and acting recklessly as regards the possibility that this would happen.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/11/us/politics/iran-school-m...
> The UN mission concluded that the strike on Shajareh Tayyebeh primary school constituted an indiscriminate attack causing civilian deaths and damage to civilian infrastructure, amounting to a war crime under international law.
Again, because this was preventable and the US acted recklessly and without regard for civilians ("indiscriminate"), going so far as to ignore the warnings of its own commanders.
Unless otherwise provided, a person shall be criminally responsible and liable for punishment for a crime within the jurisdiction of the Court only if the material elements are committed with intent and knowledge.
A mistake of fact shall be a ground for excluding criminal responsibility only if it negates the mental element required by the crime.
It's something worth arguing about, but I dont think it's open-and-shut.
why "The UN mission" conclusions are blindly considered as some high quality analytics?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volker_T%C3%BCrk
[2] US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth commented at a news conference on March 2, 2026, about “stupid rules of engagement,” suggesting that they may interfere with “fight[ing] to win.” These remarks are concerning in light of Hegseth’s actions in the past year that have weakened US military posts and mechanisms intended to ensure compliance with international humanitarian law, also known as the laws of war. - https://www.hrw.org/news/2026/03/02/us-defense-secretarys-me...
[3] "We also don't fight with stupid rules of engagement. We untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt and kill the enemies of our country. No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement, just common sense, maximum lethality and authority for warfighters." - https://www.war.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/4318...
This sounds like extreme hand-waving to me.
Productive discussion would be if you go read that report before bringing it here, and tell what material evidence they have for that specific incident?
US picked some target through some classified protocol, what evidence states that there was some reckless in process?
Please refer to the report [1] and read the following sections (they are too long to paste here):
- II (full section)
- IV.B.1 (full section)
- IV.B.2.88-89
- IV.B.2.95-96
- V.B (full section)
The report itself attributes its sources. If that's not enough, the DoD's own preliminary investigation produced the outdated-targeting finding. Pre-strike imagery of the school is public.
[1] https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies...
They now claim that any area with a sufficient large number of people they deem are “terrorists” is a legitimate target.
They use that to “legitimately” target villages, hospitals and schools.
These are crimes. The point of defining war crimes is to compel state not to take “opportunities” at the cost of innocent lives. It’s never okay.
The irony of course being that Israel deeply embedded me military facilities in cities and civilian areas itself.
See also somewhat overlooked Bloomberg story from June:
>An Analyst’s Missed Remark Surfaced in Deadly Iran School Strike Probe
>An analyst's missed remarks and US intelligence systems that weren’t connected to one another are among the missteps that investigators have surfaced while probing the cause of a missile strike on an Iranian school that killed an estimated 120 children, people familiar with the matter said.
>Years before the US attacked Iran at the end of February, an intelligence analyst examining information about potential future strike targets in Iran noticed changes at a site the US had previously characterized as a naval facility belonging to the elite wing of the Iranian military in Minab city in the southeast of the country. It was, in fact, now an elementary school.
>The analyst remarked on changes at the site in a digital intelligence tool, but that tool wasn’t linked up to the official intelligence database that the US uses to develop strike targets and the information was never conveyed to military commanders, according to people familiar with the matter who declined to be named discussing sensitive matters.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2026-06-26/an-analys...
That formulation guarantees that most war crimes won't be revealed as such. The militaries of the world are operating under top secrecy about what they know, knew or plan on knowing, ditto for their intent. They can claim whatever they please without regard to actual reality, proof is impossible to obtain.
Thus, under this formulation, war crimes are doubly guarded by the secrecy of two kinds of information available only to the perpetrators and protected by harsh laws again any leaks.
Assange knows, he dealt with it but I doubt he or anyone else will try to break the secrecy again given the zeal of his prosecution. To think that what he revealed was an isolated case is laughable.
There were 900 strikes in 12h, and only one target involved a strike on a school, and huge coincidence that target was a dozen meters from a military compound and was in fact part of that military compound not long ago.
It's quite easy to accept that this was a horrific mistake. Whether you agree with the idea of striking Iran at all is up to you, but once they "went hot", precision strikes on military targets were successful in 900 cases, and it's plausible that one precision strike was issued incorrectly.
It doesn't bring back the kiddos. It also doesn't mean it's a war crime. It's right to be angry about that strike or even the larger war if you oppose it, but spurious legal justifications for outrage aren't required - it can be wrong even when legally justified or plausibly just a mistake.
But nothing anywhere in any of these increasingly pathological threads do I see evidence of a war crime. Tragedy yes, intentional crime, no. Preventable yes, cold blooded intentional child murder no.
It was clearly a tragedy. Very few Americans--certainly I've never met one--support that strike in retrospect. Instead they are angry that such a terrible mistake was possible and they generally want a thorough investigation and targeting procedure reforms to make sure it doesn't happen again.
Americans hold their military to a high moral standard. But wars don't have to be fought so cleanly. Certainly the Golden Horde had no compunction about genocide. If acknowledging our shared humanity with innocent victims and expressing remorse for their deaths is ridiculed, then we're primed for a descent into nihilism, wanton cruelty, and mass slaughter.
EDIT: @Hikikomori, I cannot reply to your post, but I am happy to engage if you follow HN guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> When disagreeing, please reply to the argument
> Please don't post shallow dismissals
There are two scenarios, one of which is a "double tap" and one which is not:
1) There are 'n' targets. The targets get hit in rapid succession, one bomb each. <- normal bombing
2) There is 1 target. It is hit once. There is a long delay, long enough for first responders to show up. The same 1 target is hit again. <- THIS is a double tap.
The IRGC base had multiple buildings. Each building was hit once. That's not what most people would call a double-tap.
Some people ran from one building to another and were hit twice. That's just... bad luck.
The real crime committed by US forces is that they didn't care to update and review their targeting information, resulting in totally unnecessary civilian deaths. Their hubris, their pride, their unfounded confidence in their own superiority resulted in a shameful atrocity.
That's bad enough.
Edit: it also explicitly says "double tap" under "Events" and links to the article for "Double-tap strike"
Do you hear yourself? Have you ever in your life met someone this sadistic? It was definitely a mistake. One might argue criminal negligence, but there is no way everyone in the loop here is just pure evil. That just isn't how people think in North America. It is unfathomable that a team of US military (people with families of their own no doubt), would all nod along and agree with your contention.
Unfortunately there's a very large, compelling body of evidence of the US military routinely killing civilians with double tap.
Intentionally.
This is not a negligence, this is a strategy because they get off scot free.
- https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=...
- https://www.culawreview.org/journal/double-standards-in-inte...
- https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/3/23/substantial-evidenc...
- https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2013-08-01/bur...
- https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/12/2/trumps-boat-bombing...
- https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-24557333
- https://lab.imedd.org/en/double-tap-the-tactic-that-is-consi...
Routine. They routinely exterminate civilians with this kind of attacks.
Where have you lived for the last 10 years?
The Vietnam and Korean wars would like to have a word.
Your belief that the US military is guided by any kind of moral or ethical line is naïve at best.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Gun_Ri_massacre
The problem is fighting unethical enemies, because they do shit like use ambulances as troop transport, have soldiers dress the same as civilians, and given any kid old enough to shoot a rifle.
To your post more specifically, is there is no one holding these unethical enemies responsible. There are no history books, or journalists, or wikipedia articles about the insane shit they do.
The Taliban has a base where they truck in young boys to "service" the officers and it's lost to time. The US has a single ethics catastrophe, and they are held up for it for decades...
You can be unethical and still profoundly incompetent.
I say usually, because there are some exceptions and nukes are one of them, they make genocide a viable war strategy. But even nuking Vietnam would not have worked, cause you will simply get nuked back.
In modern militaries though, the expectation is that you will just leave civilians alone.
The worst thing people would do is surrendering in those cases.
Nice. https://jackpoulson.substack.com/p/inside-the-pro-israel-inf...
And you know what? You're right. Those are all terrorist organizations.
Remember that, prior to this, the US military had been conducting many suspicious strikes on boats in the gulf. It’s not like this came out of nowhere. The culture of negligence and lack of care was well-established.
You just linked to a standard military tactic
Yes, I have. In the US. Some were active military personnel at the time.
Some folks are just warped, but some folks change a lot after they have experienced war.
All the time, on the internet. People will reveal the most deranged opinions when they feel immune from consequences for them.
When you phrase it like that, I firmly believe that's exactly what happened.
Not met anyone personally like that. But I have made sure that I kept good company.
However, there was precedence in the form of Nazi Germany.
Can we be sure without evidence that this administration did not do it knowingly, given how they have been behaving thus far?
This isn't necessarily driven by sadism. A sociopath following an amoral (immoral) decision process where they draft a plan to decapitate military leadership by trying to attract them to a place to then kill them would fit the description.
And from a moral point of view, is it justifiable to kill military personnel in a military engagement that's not even framed as a war?
These are all detailed in both the UN fact finding mission and the US' own investigation.
"Families and survivors interviewed by Iranian media reported that the school was struck twice, with a brief interval between strikes. Several sources reported that the first munition struck the lower floor of the school, leading the principal and teachers to move the children to a prayer room on the upper floor. A second munition then struck the upper floor, killing many of the children."
Is there another doc that contradicts the timing or mentions first responders? I'm kinda pissed that The Guardian doesn't link anything.
https://www.reutersconnect.com/item/the-primary-school-targe...
EDIT: and here's Forensic Architecture https://forensic-architecture.org/investigation/airstrikes-o...
> Mohammad Yazdanpanah, a driver with the local fire department, said: ‘About half an hour, maybe forty minutes after we had arrived at the scene, there were two additional explosions, one after another. At that time there were perhaps one thousand to fifteen hundred people gathered in the compound and around the area. When the first explosion happened, we immediately threw ourselves to the ground to seek shelter. Just a few seconds later—perhaps three or four seconds afterward—a second explosion followed.’
> At least 165 people, mostly schoolgirls, were killed. One official cited by The New York Times said, “We are still looking into the strike, but the evidence increasingly points to US aircraft as the source of the school being hit.” US authorities have acknowledged the inquiry but have not officially claimed responsibility.
Any ways I think it's a little obfuscated because the initial wave of airstrikes started at 11:22am and there were 9 in total, several hitting near the school and at least 2 hitting the school directly. All of this happened in less than 2 minutes according to a joint investigation by Sky News and Forensic Architecture.[0] I think that's also the source of the confusion of whether this was a "triple tap" or "double tap"
[0] https://forensic-architecture.org/investigation/airstrikes-o...
I'm still thinking it's not after families or first responders arrived, because the death toll would've included more than children and teachers. He said 1500 people were gathered.
The claim is that "the U.S. failed in its obligation to do everything feasible to verify that it was a military objective. Updating targeting information and acting upon such information falls within the category of feasible precautions an attacking party is required to take under IHL . . . the strikes are a violation of the obligation to distinguish between civilian objects.
And:
" the Mission concluded that when targeting the school building, the U.S acted wilfully, that is with the requisite mental element of recklessness ( dolus eventualis)."
And (finally):
". . . the Mission found that these strikes constituted an indiscriminate attack in violation of the principle of distinction."
The UN report's claim is that the US negligently used outdated information which led them to think this compound hit was still a military target.
It's evident you didn't read the report and submitted a shitpost.
> It's evident you didn't read the report and submitted a shitpost.
Chill.