The U.N.’s fact-finding mission on Iran acknowledged it found “reasonable grounds” to conclude the U.S. military committed war crimes in two bombings inside Iran that allegedly resulted in civilian casualties.
The Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran, which was established by the U.N. Human Rights Council in 2022, released its report on the conditions Iranian civilians are living through, both from U.S. attacks and Iranian state-sanctioned violence on Thursday.
“The Mission finds reasonable grounds to believe that the US committed the war crime of launching an indiscriminate attack resulting in loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects,” the report reads.
The report outlined two U.S. strikes in particular. In the opening hours of the war, an alleged U.S. strike in Minab hit a school that was on a military base and killed more than 100 children. U.S. Central Command launched an investigation into the strike but has not yet released its findings, though the commander, Adm. Brad Cooper, committed in congressional testimony to providing a public, nonclassified report of the investigation’s results.
There was another strike, this one in Lamerd, Iran, that the U.N. Fact-Finding mission attributed to U.S. forces.
“These included Tomahawk missile strikes on the clearly identifiable Shajareh Tayyebeh Primary School in Minab – which killed over 150 people, including approximately 120 girls and boys – and another airstrike where Precision Strike Missiles dispersed clouds of tungsten pellets over a clearly identifiable sports complex and residential area in Lamerd, killing 22 civilian men and women,” the report reads.
In April, the New York Times reported that the United States had bombed 22 schools and 17 healthcare facilities during the early part of the war, though Cooper later denied those allegations during his appearance on Capitol Hill shortly thereafter.
He said, “We spent the weekend, myself and the staff, we looked into all 39 incidents that were outlined in the article. My assessment and our staff confirmed, only one of them correlated with a U.S. strike. That was the strike in Minab on the girls’ school. It is an active IRGC base. The other 38 instances did not involve U.S. munitions.”
More recently, reports surfaced in Iranian state media that a U.S. strike in early September hit a house, killing a handful of people inside who were attending a wedding there at the time.
“We’re aware of the reports, which originated from Iranian state media, and we are looking into them,” CENTCOM spokesman Commander Tim Hawkins told the Washington Examiner earlier this month. “The U.S. military never targets civilians, unlike the IRGC,” he said, referring to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
CENTCOM did not respond to questions about the status of the civilian harm inquiry into the Minab strike or whether they have launched a formal investigation into the Sept. 1 strike.
The Pentagon made major changes under Secretary of War Pete Hegseth to the implementation strategy for its civilian harm mitigation strategy. Several Democrats have expressed concerns about reductions made in the civilian harm mitigation effort and whether it could have contributed to the Minab school strike.
The U.N. mission also found that state security forces killed civilians in its crackdown on dissent this year “on a staggering scale in all 31 provinces.”
BREAKING DOWN THE MILITARY’S NEARLY $40 BILLION IRAN WAR
Tens of thousands of people were swept up in large-scale, arbitrary arrests and detention, in which they faced torture, solitary confinement, and the denial of legal counsel, and the report said the repressive efforts “marked an unprecedented escalation from past crackdowns.”
The Trump administration and the United Nations have a contentious relationship dating back to President Donald Trump’s first term. He has routinely criticized the international body for what he describes as its ineffectiveness and disagrees with many of its priorities.