Images taken near Iranian school hit in deadly strikes show fragments of U.S.-made missile
More than 170 people, including many children, were killed in the Feb. 28 strikes on the school in Minab, according to Iranian officials.
President Donald Trump issued his latest suggestion of Iranian involvement in the attack hours after the emergence of a video, geolocated by NBC News, that appears to show a U.S. Tomahawk striking an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps site near the school.
Asked by a reporter Monday why he was the only U.S. official suggesting that Iran was responsible, Trump said, “Because I just don’t know enough about it.”
“I think it’s something that I was told is under investigation, but Tomahawks are, are used by others,” he said.
Appearing to refer to the incident, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Tuesday that the U.S. would investigate “where things happen that need to be investigated.” He added that “open source” was “not the place to determine what did or did not happen.”
“We take things very, very seriously and investigate them thoroughly, which takes time,” he said.
Asked about the images released on Iranian state media, the Defense Department pointed to its ongoing investigation.
Trump said Monday that he would be “willing to live with” the results of the probe examining who was responsible for the attack and how it happened.
But he insisted that another party could be responsible, claiming Iran itself “also has Tomahawks,” even though the U.S., the United Kingdom and Australia are the only countries known to have them, with Japan and the Netherlands also having agreed to purchase them in recent years.
The Pentagon has acknowledged using Tomahawk missiles in the war, publishing a photo and video online of the USS Spruance firing a Tomahawk land attack missile on Feb. 28, the day the U.S. launched strikes on Iran, as well as the day the school was struck. It was not clear what area the strike that hit the school might have been targeting.
Meanwhile, Trump administration officials told members of Congress at a closed-door meeting last week that the U.S. had been targeting the area where the school was struck, two U.S. officials told NBC News.
The administration officials also said their military partner, Israel, was not responsible for the school’s bombing, the two U.S. officials said, with the Israeli military saying it is not aware of any connection between its operations in Iran and the school strike.
The Trump administration’s preliminary findings show it is increasingly likely that a U.S. munition was used, according to a U.S. official and a person familiar with the investigation. The U.S. is still looking into whether the strikes were the result of bad intelligence or poor targeting, the sources said.
