Trump’s UN Ambassador Punts When Pressed On President’s Claim US Didn’t Strike Girls School in Iran: ‘I’ll Leave That to the Investigators’

Donald Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, Mike Waltz, failed Sunday to back up the president’s claim that Iran — not the U.S. — was responsible for the air strike on an Iranian girls’ school that Iran said killed 175 people.

While aboard Air Force One Saturday, Trump told the press, “We figure it was done by Iran, because they’re very inaccurate, as you know, with their munitions. They have no accuracy whatsoever. It was done by Iran.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, also on the flight, added, “We’re certainly investigating,” before adding, “But, the only side that targets civilians is Iran.”

Martha Raddatz hosting ABC’s This Week told Waltz,”The New York Times did a meticulous look at that [strike] — satellite photos. They’re not saying the U.S. would do that on purpose but they said it appears that the U.S. is responsible for that bombing. Why did the president say he believes it is Iran?”

“Well, I’ll leave that to the investigators to determine,” Waltz said before bringing up past instances of strikes by Iranian-backed groups.

“We’ve seen instances like we saw in Gaza for example, where Hamas immediately blamed the Israelis. The international community jumped on it, and it turned out it was an errant rocket from Hamas,” Waltz said.

“So we’ve seen those kind of incidences in the past. As Secretary Hegseth said, it’s under investigation,” Waltz said. “I can tell you as a veteran in no uncertain terms the United States does everything it can to avoid civilian casualties. Sometimes, of course, tragic mistakes occur — unlike what we see from the likes of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, the Iranian regime, who just massacred 30-40,000 of its own people.”

When asked a similar question by NBC News’s Kristen Welker Sunday, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi laughed, saying, “Well, it is, you know, funny. It’s our school, these are our students, our girls, and they were attacked by an American jet fighter, and they have been killed. Why Iran is responsible? Have we started this war? Have we attacked our own people? No!”

Watch the clip above via ABC News’s This Week.

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