Pentagon Stonewalls Congress Over Deadly Iran School Airstrike

(MENAFN) The Pentagon has again refused to accept responsibility for a strike on an Iranian elementary school that killed more than 170 people — the majority of them children — rebuffing mounting pressure from US lawmakers demanding answers nearly three months after the deadly attack.

The Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school in southern Iran was struck on February 28, the opening day of the US-Israeli bombing campaign against the Islamic Republic. Iranian officials place the death toll at 175, with most victims being young girls.

Initial responses from US officials were contradictory and evasive — President Donald Trump went as far as suggesting the strike was "done by Iran." Subsequent investigations by media organisations and independent analysts pointed to a US-manufactured missile as the likely munition. An internal military inquiry reportedly concluded that US forces had relied on "outdated targeting data" that misidentified the school as part of an adjacent Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps naval base. The Pentagon later elevated the probe's status but has offered no substantive updates beyond describing it as ongoing.

At a House Armed Services Committee hearing Tuesday, lawmakers confronted Admiral Brad Cooper, commander of US Central Command, demanding both an acknowledgment of responsibility and disclosure of preliminary findings.

"It's been 80 days or thereabouts since the initial bombing campaign that struck the girls' school. It's really pretty clear what happened there," said Representative Adam Smith, the committee's ranking Democrat.

Smith accused the Pentagon of "endless stalling," pointing out that the military had historically moved far more swiftly to acknowledge "these types of mistakes" even prior to concluding formal investigations.

"Can you at this moment acknowledge that that mistake was made and that we were responsible for it?" Smith asked Cooper, who replied that "the US does not deliberately target civilians" and reiterated that the investigation is ongoing.

"So that's a no? We will not take responsibility for something we very obviously did?" Smith pressed.

Cooper deflected, describing "it's a complex investigation" and asserting that the school was situated "on an active IRGC cruise missile base," while pledging a final report upon completion of the inquiry. Archived records from the school's official website, however, indicate the institution was adjacent to — not within — the military compound, separated from it by a fence clearly visible in satellite imagery.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei responded to Cooper's testimony with unambiguous fury, calling his claims "an appalling lie."

"This shameless distortion is a clear attempt to obscure the severe reality," Baghaei wrote on X Wednesday, demanding accountability and characterising the strike as "a grave violation of international humanitarian law" and "a clear war crime."

The attack has reverberated internationally. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova condemned what she called American "cruelty, cynicism, and dehumanization." Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez both expressed solidarity with the victims of what they described as a "massacre."

Meanwhile, diplomatic efforts to secure a durable settlement remain paralysed. Although active hostilities were suspended under a fragile April ceasefire, broader US-Iran peace negotiations have hit a wall. Trump has already dismissed Tehran's latest proposals and revived threats of renewed military action.

"We may have to give Iran another big hit… I'm saying two or three days, maybe Friday, Saturday, Sunday, something, maybe early next week, a limited period of time, because we can't let them have a new nuclear weapon," he told reporters Tuesday.

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