The US military has recently acknowledged for the first time that an airstrike initiated by cruise missiles mistakenly hit a school in eastern Iran, resulting in at least 175 deaths, the majority of whom were children. This significant misjudgment was confirmed by the US Central Command (CENTCOM) following a preliminary investigation, which revealed that outdated intelligence provided by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) failed to recognize that the target building had been converted into a civilian educational facility.
The incident occurred in the early hours of February 28, when the US launched multiple Tomahawk land-attack missiles. The building, which had previously been a naval facility, had been transformed into the “Sayed al-Shuhada School” three years prior, hosting educational activities for hundreds of students and teachers daily. Despite the Tomahawk missiles being known for their precision, the intelligence was not updated in time, leading to a complete failure of the strike process based on erroneous target information.
In the initial aftermath, the Iranian government and local media quickly reported on the devastation caused by the bombing of the school, while the US Department of Defense refrained from commenting. President Trump publicly questioned the authenticity of the reports, labeling them as “Iranian propaganda.” It was not until March 15, after CENTCOM completed its internal review and reported to the National Security Council, that the US officially acknowledged the incident as a “target identification error.”
Retired Army Colonel David Evans pointed out that modern military strikes follow the F2T2EA process—“Find, Fix, Track, Target, Engage, Assess”—where the nature of the target is a core basis for estimating collateral damage. “If the intelligence is years out of date, all risk assessment models will collapse,” he emphasized, noting that while such errors are rare, they expose structural flaws in the intelligence updating mechanisms within dynamic conflict environments.
This incident not only caused a humanitarian disaster but also poses a severe test for US-Iran relations and the credibility of US military operations globally. As the international community calls for an independent investigation, whether the US military will reform its intelligence review processes has become a focal point for the next phase of scrutiny.