WASHINGTON — More than eight months after a U.S. strike hit the Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school in Minab, Iran, on the first day of the war, the Pentagon has not released its investigation.[1][2] Officials who spoke anonymously to Bloomberg described “a cascade of preventable failures.”[3] That account comes from unnamed officials, and the review itself is not public.
Related: Massie Files 8 Impeachment Articles Against Hegseth, Forcing a House Vote.
The toll
Two Tomahawk missiles hit the school on Feb. 28.[1] Counts differ. Local officials say 156 people were killed, 120 of them children.[2] Gizmodo reported more than 150 dead, including at least 123 children, and Military Times cited UN and Iranian officials for at least 168 dead.[1][4]
What the review reportedly found
U.S. databases had listed the compound as a military site for years. Walls and separate entrances cutting the school off from the adjacent base appear to have been finished by 2017, and a 2018 image shows painted walls, a soccer pitch and playground markings. The school had its own website and appeared on Google Maps.[1]
Bloomberg reported in June that an analyst spotted changes as early as 2019 and logged remarks in a system not connected to the main database used for targeting.[1] The New York Times reported that officials relied on satellite imagery not updated in seven years.[3]
Officials told Bloomberg that the site, cataloged as an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps facility, was fed into Palantir’s Maven Smart System and came out as a recommended day-one target. Some Central Command users expected Maven to flag stale records.[1] More than 1,000 targets were hit in the first 24 hours, a pace that Bloomberg’s sources said compressed the time for checks. Civilian harm teams across the Defense Department had fallen by about 90%, to fewer than 20 people, and no one on those teams reviewed the site before the strike.[1]
AI or people?
Palantir says it “is not responsible for the underlying data” and that no evidence shows its software was at fault. Its chief technology officer, Shyam Sankar, disputed Bloomberg’s reporting on CBS.[1][2] Former military officials told Semafor that humans, not AI, were to blame.[4]
Wes Bryant, a former Pentagon civilian harm official, said an open-source search would have flagged the building as a school. “What we have here is most likely a case of misidentification,” he told Straight Arrow News, adding that this is no excuse.[2]
Where accountability stands
Washington has not publicly accepted responsibility. President Trump said in March that he believed Iran was responsible, and a senior administration official told Bloomberg the United States does not target civilians.[1] A Pentagon spokesperson said the incident remains under investigation.[1]
A UN fact-finding mission said there were reasonable grounds to believe the United States committed the war crime of an indiscriminate attack. The Defense Department declined to comment on that report. More than 120 House Democrats asked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in March what role AI tools played.[1]
What happens next
Officials told Bloomberg the full report has been all but complete for months, so its release is the next test.[1] More is on our Warfare and Artificial Intelligence pages.
Sources
- Gizmodo: Pentagon Investigators Say Overreliance on Palantir AI Tech Contributed to U.S. Strike That Killed 123 Iranian Children
- Straight Arrow News: Staff cuts, oversight failure to blame in Iran school strike, not faulty AI targeting: Ex-Pentagon official
- ThePrint: US strike on school in Iran’s Minab was result of over-reliance on AI, outdated SAT images, Bloomberg
- Military Times: Deadly Iran school strike casts shadow over Pentagon’s AI targeting push
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