UN Mission: US Committed War Crime in Minab School Strike

The UN’s Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran released a report today, Thursday, September 17, marking the first time a UN body has found reasonable grounds that the United States committed a war crime in its war with Iran. The same report, in the same breath, attributes crimes against humanity to Iran’s theocratic government for acts committed against its own citizens. For a multilateral system that has spent months trying to turn the war into something resembling a legal process, this is the first document to hold both sides of the conflict to the same standard of accountability.

The mission was established in 2022 by the UN Human Rights Council, a Geneva-based body with 47 member states, and is led by Bangladeshi lawyer Sara Hosein. The report draws on interviews with 73 people inside and outside Iran, satellite imagery, photographic and video material, and data from organizations the mission considers credible. Its findings will be presented to the Human Rights Council on Monday.

What Happened on February 28

The mission found reasonable grounds that the United States carried out two strikes on February 28, the first day of the US-Israeli attacks on Iran, and that both amounted to the war crime of an indiscriminate attack. The first hit the Shajare Tayebe primary school in Minab, in southern Iran, with Tomahawk cruise missiles. Iranian state media claim 168 people were killed in the strike, most of them children.

Here the sources diverge on how firmly it has been established that a missile actually struck the school building. The Associated Press, citing its own investigation, reports that “at least one US missile” hit the Shajare Tayebe school, but adds that a final accounting of events still does not exist. NBC News, citing its own reporting, says American munitions “likely” struck the school. The UN mission’s report goes further than either outlet, concluding that the school building “was not a mistake or collateral damage” from the strike on the neighboring Revolutionary Guard complex, but was a deliberate target in its own right.

“Following the attacks by the United States and Israel on February 28, the mission found reasonable grounds to believe the United States committed a war crime by carrying out indiscriminate attacks that resulted in loss of life or injury to civilians, and damage to civilian objects,” the mission said in its statement.

The second strike, carried out with precision missiles loaded with tungsten ball bearings, hit a sports complex and residential area in the city of Lamerd, also on February 28. According to the mission’s findings, 22 civilians, men and women, were killed there. US Central Command (CENTCOM) has so far denied responsibility for the Lamerd strike. Across both strikes combined, the report states, at least 178 civilians were killed, among them women and children.

The White House, the State Department and the Pentagon did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The Trump administration has not so far accepted responsibility, nor has it released the findings of its own Pentagon investigation into the strike on the school in Minab.

Crimes Against Humanity in the Protest Crackdown

The second part of the report addresses the crackdown on protests that began in Iran in late December 2025. The mission concluded that the killings, torture, arbitrary arrests and enforced disappearances carried out by Iranian security forces over the past two years reached, as the report puts it, “staggering proportions,” and that many of these violations amount to crimes against humanity.

“The report found that many of these grave violations amount to crimes against humanity, including murder, imprisonment, torture and other inhumane acts committed as part of a widespread and systematic attack on civilians,” the mission said in its statement.

According to data cited by the mission, Iranian security forces opened fire with automatic weapons on crowds, beat demonstrators and arrested medical workers. Detainees, the report says, were subjected to torture and denied legal representation, while their families were left without any information about their whereabouts. Tehran, the mission adds, also stepped up its use of the death penalty over the same period, and more than 70 people, including five women and three boys, remain, according to the mission, at “imminent risk” of execution.

Iran’s official toll from the protest crackdown stands at 3,038 killed and 25,000 injured, but the mission believes the real numbers are likely significantly higher. The Iranian government, the report notes, did not respond to roughly 36 requests for information from the mission. Tehran rejects the accusations and blames the violence on terrorists and rioters it claims are backed from abroad.

What Comes Next

The report is not legally binding, but it adds to the existing body of international documentation on crimes committed during the war in Iran and, its authors say, could form part of the basis for future efforts to establish accountability before international courts. The mission called on both the United States and Iran to halt all violations and crimes and to provide victims with “full reparations.”

Srpske Novine previously reported on the US House of Representatives vote to end the war with Iran, when President Trump said Tehran wanted a deal while Iran continued to insist on its own terms. Now, months after that vote, the same war has for the first time received a formal assessment from a UN body, one Washington has yet to respond to.

The mission’s findings will be presented to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on Monday, when the 47 member states will have the chance to weigh in on a document that, for the first time in the same report, attributes responsibility for crimes committed in the same war to both the United States and Iran.