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If this turns out to be true, which seems increasingly likely day by day, this will be the humanitarian price against which the rest of the campaign will be measured. The US will have ceded much of the moral high ground they claimed in avenging the slaughter of innocent protesters.

> The US will have ceded much of the moral high ground they claimed in avenging the slaughter of innocent protesters.

It will be forgotten soon.

> It will be forgotten soon.

it won't. Opposing US political side will weaponize this incident in their interests.

In the US, but not in Iran and elsewhere.

Yeah, but that does not influence US politics.

I’d argue that Iran has a huge influence on US politics, as the US is currently at war with them.

The fate of Iranian civilians does not impact US politics.

A majority of Americans are completely unconcerned by the suffering of victims of the empire abroad.

I hope you're right, and one day we don't read 20 or 30 years from now the biography of a terrorist, and it starts out with their experience being the sibling of a child injured at one of these schools.

You forget the UI killed a million Iraqis and also had a torture prison. I don't think the US has every had the high ground.

Can't cede moral high ground when that moral high ground is a claim no one believes in anymore. If they ever did.

It’s basically like North Korea calling itself “democratic peoples republic”. Just roll your eyes and move on.

I get the feeling AI will be blamed for this, but I would not rule out the hypothesis that this was done intentionally in order to incite Iran to do something that bolsters support for the US regime’s actions. They desperately need domestic political support for this war and right now even the hardcore MAGA people are against it.

Reporting from the CBC mentioned that the school was located within an area surrounded by other military buildings. The building housing the school was used for military purposes in the past.

I think it's more likely that the US was going off of outdated intelligence.

Yeah, Occam's Razor and all that. The current admin has proven itself to be poor players of games like checkers, let alone 5D chess.

Sounds more like Bloody Stupid Jonssons Razor than Occams razor. The dumbest possible explanation is probably right.

Agreed with others here...and updating intel for primary targets is customary. Which obviously didn't happen here. The targeting cycle and the F2T2 cycle, dynamic targeting loops (probably) should have brought the latest intel about the school to light.

As for whether it was AI - the US DOD Ethic's first tenent is Responsible - personnel remain responsible...

Here is a bit more info:

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/3/3/questions-over-minab...

"It can be said with a degree of confidence that, in 2013, the site was used exclusively as a military barracks with a strict security character, as there was no indication of an independent civilian use of any part of the complex.

But this changed radically in 2016. Satellite images dated September 6, 2016 capture the main turning point, when new internal walls were created and built, fully and tightly separating the school building area from the rest of the military block."

If they work with intelligence data older than 10 years, then this would still account to gross negligence, possibly counting as a war crime. But misstakes happen and they did used AI for target tracking.

But the other interpretation is more dark. Because it was not just some school, but a school where the children of the IRGC go, the elite of the system. And Trump said he does not want a regime change, but rather someone from the current system who just bows to US demands. So the threat of killing all the leadership, anyone could be next - but also the threat to kill also their children and familiy until they surrender.

To quote Hegseth:

"no stupid rules of engagement,” “no politically correct wars,” and “no nation-building quagmire.”

Threatening to kill also their families makes sense with this kind of language and logic. At some point you will find someone who values the life of his family higher than that of the nation and religion.

But I do hope my theory is wrong.

When I saw that interview I immediately thought, people like Hegseth are why treaties like the Geneva Convention were created in the first place.

People like Hegseth is why you sometimes need Nuremberg trials too.

Many similar incidents occurred in Ukraine, where Russia targeted apartment blocks that were built on the former site of some sort of military building that was demolished decades ago.

The ultimate hubris is launching a multi million dollar missile to kill civilians because you couldn’t be bothered to check Google street view (or whatever).

Russia actively targets hospitals, fire departments and schools for years and you attribute it to "outdated info".

Shame on you.

It was quite obviously outdated info.

What people don’t seem to understand is the word “targeted”.

They see some obviously civilian target in ruins with screaming parents outside and they have an instant visceral emotional reaction: “What kind of monster would do something like this on purpose!?”

Practically nobody targets civilian building with expensive precision munitions! They’re expensive! There’s limited supply! Targets are chosen to maximise the military effect.

The problem is that the victims and journalists have “boots on the ground”. They’re right there and can clearly see the civilian nature of the target with their own eyes.

The person doing the targeting from som bunker thousands of miles away can see only blurry rectangles on an outdated map, has sparse intelligence reports, and targets coordinates. They’re not walking up to the missile like it’s some sort of intelligent war animal and whispering “kill civilians!” in its ear.

Similarly, they’re not on the ground standing outside the civilian target waving the missile in with light sticks like some airport tarmac staff.

I repeat: they’re thousands of miles away and have to target hundreds of buildings that all look the same-ish from space and aren’t magically labelled by God as “no longer valid under the Geneva conventions” or whatever.

I’m not saying that this makes war good or in any way ethical, but you can see how a mistake is made that doesn’t require cartoonish evil people to explain.

Terrorbombning is a thing, you should look it up.

Oh sure, and the US did it against both Japan and Germany in WW2, but those were not even remotely the same scenario as precision strikes against the IRGC and Iranian leadership in general.

This was clearly a horrific mistake, especially obvious since the girls school used to be a military building.

I was talking about Russia, not US incompetence or malice, who have an explicit tactic to target civilians.

They target civilian infrastructure like power plants and the like, but again, that's "not the same" as purposefully targeting a school or an apartment block. The latter they do fairly clearly by accident, because I've seen at least four video clips of Ukranians interviewed outside of a bombed civilian building saying something to the effect of "Oh yeah, back in 1990 there was a military training facility here but it was demolished in `91."

Note that 1991 was the year Ukraine and Russia split and Russia stopped getting a "direct feed" of things like urban planning information from Kiev.

> civilian infrastructure like power plants

The Russians have bombed multiple children’s hospitals.

Yes, well... the Russians seem especially unconcerned with checking targets for validity before mashing the fire button.

The logic they're presenting is largely the same as Israel's excuse for bombing hospitals in Gaza.

When there's a war in a civilian area, injured soldiers from the front line will be mostly treated at the nearest available hospital, which then overflows into regional hospitals further back, etc... A country under siege at the scales seen in Ukraine and Gaza don't get to pick and choose specific hospitals, they're all overflowing, so they use every available medical facility, including children's hospitals.

Worse, the convoys taking the wounded to these hospitals are more than likely military trucks and are driven by and/or escorted by military personnel in uniform.

On a blurry satellite picture or drone video the enemy will see a building frequently visited by the military.

"Legitimate target!"

Boom.

"Oops."

That's a lot of contortions to go through to avoid the clear Occam's Razor conclusion that these people are simply evil scumbags doing evil scumbag things. Bombing hospitals because they thought they contained wounded troops isn't a defense, that's a whole war crime of its own!

They have an extremely long track record of committing atrocities. You don't need to go out of your way to give them the benefit of the doubt, unless you're literally in Russia where they'll imprison you for telling the truth about what they're doing.

>Practically nobody targets civilian building with expensive precision munitions! They’re expensive! There’s limited supply! Targets are chosen to maximise the military effect.

We're not dealing with a rational or competent military chain of command. We're dealing with people who believe they're bringing about the Biblical Second Coming and that rules of engagement are "woke." These are literally cartoonishly evil people. They probably chose targets by asking Grok.

I'm going to confidently state that nobody in the US military chain of command gave the order to "mix some schools into the target list" for any reason, religious or not.

That's absurd on its face, and if you honestly believe that, then your mental model of how the world (and people in general) function is fundamentally broken.

>That's absurd on its face, and if you honestly believe that, then your mental model of how the world (and people in general) function is fundamentally broken.

I'm not talking about the world or people in general, I'm talking about about the Commander in Chief Donald Trump and "Secretary of War" Pete Hegseth, the people who set the tone and make the decisions. And if you listen to either one of them, especially Hegseth, you'll realize it isn't absurd on its face at all.

Even if no one gave a specific order to "mix some schools into the target list" this administration clearly and explicitly - as in, has literally stated on the record - does not care about morality, ethics, rules of engagement or anything of the sort. It's not out of the question that they would intentionally target civilian infrastructure just as a show of force and aggression, or simply not care because their goal is and I'm quoting here "killing people and breaking things."

You forgot about churches and shopping malls.

I do think there is a strong possibility the people in charge in the US government believe an Iran state sponsored terrorism attack would be a political benefit to them. Such things boost support for the sitting President, and could also give political cover for additional authoritarian acts to help them retain power. Would they do the school attack on purpose? Maybe? But for sure they keep the war going until they generate the response they are looking for...

I can't say I'm as conspiratorial as you.

I don't really know how these systems work, perhaps I shouldn't speak without research.

But it seems like a pretty basic error.

The base has looks like 5 buildings in an L shape. 4 buildings where hit in an L shape.

I can imagine the sites were picked from a satellite image and the wrong building was marked.

Or in flight from the camera the wrong buildings were marked.

It is our arrogance that we can blow up hundreds of buildings that makes us try and see meaning behind these mistakes.

Instead we should just be far more cautious about blowing buildings up because these mistakes are inevitable.

The perfect just war simply does not exist.

> The perfect just war simply does not exist.

Agree.

In the moment before war is initiated, before a strike is launched against a country, the leaders considering war must immediately assume they are likely to destroy a school full of children some point.

It's a really warped mind that could think the best way to build domestic war support would be to blow up a girls' school, but frankly i haven't seen anything from the u.s. government that makes it sound implausible.

Sounds too convoluted, and implies that those in power in the countries attacking Iran have a grand plan that goes beyond killing people in Iran.

The explanation is simpler. They want death, so they are bombing shit indiscriminately

Hitting a school was not a mistake, it was the point.

I think a tragic mistake like this was foreseeable (in a vague sense), but I highly doubt that anyone intentionally bombed an elementary school full of children.

The NYT had some good reporting on this, and you can see how the mistake was made. The elementary school used to be part of the IRGC base until 2016. Then it was fenced off and made an elementary school. The “shooter” (in this case, the USA) had a duty to check that the target was currently a valid military target. This verification, if it was done at all, was clearly the problem.

I’m sure you have someone directly responsible for this mistake who is going to have a hard time living with themselves. But like I said, starting a war leads to inevitable tragedy, and I doubt the people who are indirectly responsible will ever recognize their culpability in this.

It really doesn't matter whether it was a mistake or how the mistake was made. If it were your kid's elementary school that got blown up, would you say "Oh, well, it wasn't intentional. The bad guys just had outdated intelligence. These things happen."

> It really doesn't matter whether it was a mistake

It does matter if people go around saying that “they want death, so they are bombing shit indiscriminately.”

I'm not sure how "they want war, so they are bombing negligently" is any different. Or morally better.

It's not, but that's not what the USA wants. They want Iran to stop destabilising the ME, and to eliminate the threat to the USA consisting of the Iranian nuke program, the ballistic missile program, and the religious zeal to use them.

What on earth makes you assert the USA just 'wants war'? If this war goes on for too long Trump is cooked. He'll lose the election and might even be unpopular enough to cop the persecution he deserves.

> What on earth makes you assert the USA just 'wants war'?

The "Department of War" they created before promptly starting an absolute textbook War of Aggression is evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that the war was premeditated.

> stop destabilising the ME

USA is the destabilizing force. In the case of Iran specifically, what happenes today is in many ways a consequence of the 1953 coup.

> “they want death, so they are bombing shit indiscriminately.”

It's still the most probable explanation

Disagree, negligence seems more likely

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/hegseth-insists-the-iran-...

"No stupid rules of engagement, no nation building quagmire, no democracy building exercise, no politically correct wars. We fight to win, and we don't waste time or lives," Hegseth said.

Words of your Secretary of War, not mine.

This is not a woke war. This is a war where you bomb schools and kill children.

And? It's quite a leap to take from that statement that they intentionally bombed a school. In fact, if they were trying to bomb schools, then it's quite the coincidence that they missed all the rest, and just happened to hit the one that used to be a military base.

The ridiculous renaming to "Department of War" supports this attitude, as well. They're declaring to everyone our intent to be belligerents. That the US military is meant to be aggressors and instigators, rather than defenders. All signs point to an administration bent on aggression and destruction.

I mean, to be fair, the US always has been the instigators, but it's now official, something this administration is proud of.

You're intentionally missing the point. Every time a bomb drops we're rolling the dice. Hits on civilian targets are inevitable, just like bugs are inevitable. The only solution is not to go to war at all. Don't blame the person who dropped the bomb, blame the people who ordered the bombs to be dropped.

No, I firmly believe that decades of dehumanization of Iranians in particular and Muslims in general makes this sort of "tragic mistake" desirable.

I don't think whoever was responsible for this gives many fucks about the lives of Iranians.

If a foreign power bombed anything in the US and children died people would just consider them monsters, without further considerations. No one would be pondering about faulty intel.

I refuse to launder the vileness of the aggressors here.

>but I highly doubt that anyone intentionally bombed an elementary school full of children

Hegseth said to your face "No stupid rules of engagement", "This is not a politically correct war"

These are the people who have been purposely and loudly defending Israel bombing innocent people. They genuinely believe, as they say to your face, that it is important and necessary to be brutal and extreme to win war.

Intentionally disregarding rules of engagement and protecting innocent life IS intentionally bombing that school. Civilian casualties are a reality of war and the best you can do is work your ass off to reduce them, so openly advocating for NOT doing that is intentionally killing people.

Trust me, I’m not trying to defend the leadership of the DoW. But I do believe that there is a difference between reckless indifference and actually intentionally bombing a girls school.

Both sound like war crimes to me, but the latter sounds implausible given the known facts. Let’s not redefine words like ‘intentional’ just because we are appalled. Giving something awful an “awfuller” name is not going to help.

This is real life not cartoon villany. The US administration is not a kind one, but their goals are not just 'death for people in Iran'.

Yeah, Hanlon's Razor applies.

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No these fascists will celebrate this as not being woke, this is just them defending "the west" from muslims...

Is it the lack of intensive AI analysis? AI can review satellite images over time and suggest if the building is civilian or not. School activities are very obvious

That is actually a point that rarely gets brought up -- we're so concerned about the dangers of AI in warfare, we don't necessarily stop to think of where they may be able to do a better job at avoiding lethal errors.

The US government has now been taken over by religious extremists. The irony...

I remember being worried about James Dobson, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell back in the 90s and how they were influencing politics from a distance. Thinking that was the worst it could be. Now we have [1].

1: https://i.redd.it/z3yq85ff9eng1.png

they're only pretending to be religious extremists so they will get those votes, though. just like they pretend to be everything else. when the mask comes off and they call the shots, this is who Republicans are. Guardians of Pedophiles.

> this is who Republicans are. Guardians of Pedophiles.

They are the worst of the worst! Always projecting!!

Republicans spread hatred about trans people during the day, but at night, they thirst for them and get caught fucking them.

Their voters are just next level dilusionals!!

I think it’s taken by greed focused extremists, they’re just trying to bide favor with some other extremist groups as their flail to maintain their power and attempt to expand it.

What is not clear is how the US received such faulty intelligence. It is also strange how such a blunder happened on day 1. Did some followed Iranian targets go hide in the school? If so, did Iran have a hand in engineering misleading intel for the US, or was it solely the US' doing?

Today a boy's school in Iran was affected by an explosion. The intelligence received by the US chronically seems troubled.

I’m afraid Israel will not hesitate from turning Iran into rubble just like what they did in Palestine.

Israel definitely has a lot of moles in Iran. They weren’t bothered to confirm whether the target is a school. US earlier tried to turn it on Iran’s failed defense launch.

Israel doesn't want/need Iran's land. It wants the regime toppled, and the country split apart 10 ways so the next regime is smaller and more checked.

CNN: "suggests that the United States military was responsible"

US Military: investigating whether it's responsible.

"Mandeep": rants about Israel.

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I read secondhand that it was used for military purposes during the Obama years and it appears no one tagged it as now being used as a school for the past 10 years. No idea if it's correct, but it's plausible they were operating off of extremely stale intelligence.

that sounds plausible. For people not tracking, the concept of intelligence at play is "object based development". One analyst drops a label, brief synopsis, whatever, and it just sits there for the next person who comes along. The world view gets more accurate over time, but there's a recency error that's hard to measure until the probability function collapses with a measurement.

The collapse in this case being the murder of children at school.

> The world view gets more accurate over time

Is that true? I can imagine it's true at first, going from zero bits of information to 1, etc. But information rots over time, and eventually a collection of old information may rot faster than new information improves the world view.

Also, the overall world view isn't especially important, at least not in this case. Each element's accuracy is what's important.

Hopefully each tag is accompanied by a date, at least.

Sounds like (war) criminal negligence.

Yeah, it being an honest mistake moves this down from a crime you should hang for to, also still a crime you should hang for.

Gemini lost context and hallucinated some tanks.

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I'm not clear how it is tech related. There are plenty of other ways to get general news, hacker News is not your all-purpose News feed...

China and geopolitical enemies of the US doing horrible things regularly gets hundreds of votes. It’s quite clear that this argument is mainly used to defend the US and it’s allies.

Just a single example of Russia, hundreds of votes and more than a thousand comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30458277

Edit; just search for Russia, China or Iran on https://hn.algolia.com/ and you’ll find plenty of non tech stories.

Whataboutism has no place in polite discussion: two, or more, wrongs don't make a right.

Exposing double standards is not whataboutism.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Teever 1 hour ago

...

I'm genuinely surprised.

After seeing this article flagged https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47273698 I assumed there was no hope for this one.

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Iran did not admit to this. Further, the current suspicion that the killing of these children was done by the US is coming from a US investigation, not from some external source.

I do remember seeing a comment in a previous thread about this war. Some person (their profile said cofounder of docker or something???) and they posted a twitter link saying that it looked Iranian-caused. I don’t know what compels someone to take a twitter blue check as an authoritative source. But there were people peddling bizarre rumors without any real evidence

Source?

American propaganda.

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This story is now being carried by WSJ.. the likelihood that it’s real only seems to grow each day. If true, this will be the humanitarian price the war is measured against, assuming the casualties don’t grow further.

I can’t argue with you there. The Pentagon’s silence is deafening; I only want to caution myself as much as anyone against jumping to conclusions. It may be AI, it may be bad intelligence, it may be Russian counterintelligence, it may be an IRGC false flag, it may be a little bit of all of the above.

> On top of that, the IRGC isn’t big on educating women

They're pretty lousy at the collegiate level (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_education_in_Iran) but: oh, come on.

> CNN skews heavily to the left.

Not for at least a decade, CNN is run by extremely hard right folks today

The AllSides evaluation for CNN is interesting: https://www.allsides.com/news-source/cnn-media-bias.

They have CNN currently rated as "Lean Left", changed from "Left" a few years ago due to the changes you point out. You'll need to read the fine text to see their reasoning. While there were some votes that they are now biased to Right, this was a minority position.

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