U.N.-Backed Experts Say There Are ‘Reasonable Grounds’ to Believe U.S. Committed War Crimes in Iran

FILE – A cleric takes a photograph at the shattered Shajareh Tayyebeh school, which has become a place of mourning and a memorial to those killed in a U.S. airstrike on Feb. 28, in Minab, southern Iran, Monday, Sept. 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)

There are “reasonable grounds” to believe the United States committed war crimes in Iran, according to a group of human rights experts commissioned by the United Nations who cited two U.S. strikes in the ongoing conflict — including a reportedly inadvertent hit on a girls’ school in Minab.

At least 178 civilians, including many children, were killed in the two strikes, the U.N.-backed experts said.

The Feb. 28 strike on the Shajareh Tayyebeh school in the southern part of Iran caused widespread condemnation and prompted President Donald Trump to claim the strike was “done by Iran” — an assertion that was quickly called out.

Trump later bizarrely claimed images of the devastating strike were “A.I. generated.”

The school, which was struck by a Tomahawk missile, was “clearly identifiable,” according to the U.N. experts. Other reports have indicated Iran doesn’t have Tomahawk missiles.

“Following the United States and Israeli attacks on 28 February, the mission found reasonable grounds to believe the United States committed the war crime of launching indiscriminate attacks resulting in the loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects,” the U.N.’s fact-finding team said Thursday in a statement, according to the Associated Press.

The experts noted a second Feb. 28 strike by the U.S. on a “clearly identifiable sports complex and residential area” in the southern city of Lamerd.

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