Evidence is converging on a US strike as the most likely cause of the Feb. 28 explosion at an Iranian school in Minab, contradicting President Donald Trump’s public claim that Iran was responsible.
The latest development is a three-second video circulated by Iran’s semiofficial Mehr news agency and analyzed by Bellingcat. Researcher Trevor Ball geolocated the footage to a site near the school and identified the munition seen falling toward a building as a Tomahawk cruise missile. The Associated Press also geolocated the clip near the school, while The New York Times separately verified the footage and likewise identified the missile as a Tomahawk.
That identification is central because the US military is described as the only force in this war known to possess and use Tomahawk missiles. US Central Command has already acknowledged using Tomahawks in the conflict and released a photo of the USS Spruance, part of the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier group, firing a Tomahawk on Feb. 28.
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Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also said US forces were conducting strikes in southern Iran during the opening 100 hours of operations and explicitly said on March 2 that “the first shooters at sea were Tomahawks unleashed by the United States Navy.”
The video appears to show a Tomahawk striking a building described by The New York Times as a medical clinic inside the nearby Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps naval base. As the camera pans, large plumes of dust and smoke are already visible around the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school, suggesting the school had been hit shortly before or during the same wave of strikes.
The school stood next to a Revolutionary Guard base and close to naval barracks in Hormozgan Province, an area where the US has acknowledged strikes and where its campaign has focused on naval targets near the Strait of Hormuz.
Israel has denied conducting the strike and, according to the AP, has concentrated attacks in areas closer to Israel and has not reported strikes south of Isfahan, about 800 kilometres or 500 miles away.
Asked Saturday whether the US was responsible, Trump said, without presenting evidence, “No, in my opinion, based on what I’ve seen, that was done by Iran,” adding that Iran is “very inaccurate” with its munitions. Standing beside him, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the Pentagon was investigating and asserted that “the only side that targets civilians is Iran.”
Hegseth’s broader characterization of the campaign also raises the stakes of any confirmed mistake. On March 2, he said, “America, regardless of what so-called international institutions say, is unleashing the most lethal and precise air power campaign in history.”
“No stupid rules of engagement. No politically correct wars. We fight to win, and we don’t waste time or lives,” he added.
Janina Dill, an Oxford expert on international law, said that even if the school had been misidentified as part of the neighboring IRGC base, the strike would still be “a very serious violation of international law.” She wrote that attackers are obligated to do everything feasible to verify the status of a targeted object.
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