The senior officer overseeing U.S. combat operations in Iran told senators on Thursday that the destruction of an Iranian school, which Iranian officials said killed 175 people, may have been caused by a U.S. bomb and was the only civilian casualty event he knew of in a campaign of more than 13,600 strikes.<\/p>\n
Admiral Brad Cooper\u2019s testimony suggested that he believed that the U.S. military\u2019s record since that Feb. 28 strike had been near perfect, a fact belied by investigations from human rights groups and news media organizations. Senators greeted Admiral Cooper\u2019s claims with deep skepticism, and a human rights group that investigates civilian casualties in war called it \u201cridiculous.\u201d<\/p>\n
The U.S. military still has not taken responsibility for the school strike, which Admiral Cooper, the head of U.S. Central Command, said remained under investigation.<\/p>\n
The New York Times has verified damage<\/a> to 22 schools and 17 health care facilities. The Iranian Red Crescent Society, the country\u2019s primary humanitarian relief organization, said on April 2 that at least 763 schools and 316 health care facilities had been damaged or destroyed in the war.<\/p>\n At least 1,700 Iranian civilians have been killed in the war, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cHow do you explain the publicly available information that 22 schools have been hit and multiple hospitals?\u201d asked Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, citing the Times report.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s no way we can corroborate that,\u201d Admiral Cooper replied. \u201cNo indication of that whatsoever.\u201d<\/p>\n In his testimony, Admiral Cooper described the prevention of civilian deaths on the battlefield as \u201ca matter that I\u2019m passionate about.\u201d But he also conceded that his staff had not investigated any of the incidents documented by The Times or human rights groups.<\/p>\n \u201cThe idea that they only are looking into one is pretty ridiculous,\u201d said Emily Tripp, the executive director of Airwars, a British nonprofit.<\/p>\n Airwars has recorded at least 300 civilian casualty events in Iran, many of which resulted from large bombs being dropped on heavily populated areas.<\/p>\n \u201cWhy are they not looking into any of those?\u201d Ms. Tripp asked. \u201cWe know they have the team and the infrastructure to do so.\u201d<\/p>\n The Pentagon\u2019s policy requires an initial review of every reported civilian casualty to determine if the U.S. military was active in the area. \u201cIt would be patently absurd to suggest the U.S. is only looking into one strike, given the thousands of reported civilian casualties,\u201d said Annie Shiel, the U.S. director of the Center for Civilians in Conflict.<\/p>\n Capt. Tim Hawkins, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command, said other preliminary reviews of suspected civilian casualty incidents would occur, but he did not give details.<\/p>\n Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has terminated dozens of positions across the Pentagon and the major U.S. combatant commands that focus on civilian deaths. Most of these positions worked under the umbrella of the Pentagon\u2019s Civilian Harm Mitigation Response office<\/a>, which was created by Lloyd J. Austin III, Mr. Hegseth\u2019s predecessor.<\/p>\n Admiral Cooper said that the team focused on civilian casualties at U.S. Central Command had shrunk from 10 officers to just one over the past year.<\/p>\n Most of those officers were reassigned to new positions within the command and continue to play a role in preventing civilian deaths, he said. But it was unclear from Admiral Cooper\u2019s testimony what role they were playing.<\/p>\n Some investigations, previously led by the team at U.S. Central Command, have been offloaded to a skeleton staff working out of the Pentagon, military officials said, discussing the sensitive work on the condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n Admiral Cooper told the lawmakers that his staff had been proactive. \u201cOur staff specifically warned the Iranian people more than 100 times about the threat of them being used as human shields,\u201d he said. \u201cI personally warned the Iranian people.\u201d<\/p>\n And he pledged to be transparent and release the results of the command\u2019s investigation into the Feb. 28 strike on the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary<\/a> school. In early March, an investigation made a preliminary determination that the errant strike was the result of a targeting mistake by the U.S. military, which was conducting strikes on an adjacent Iranian base<\/a>.<\/p>\n It\u2019s unclear why, more than two months after the strike, military officials have not released any formal statements on the apparent mistake.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was frankly pretty clear from the very beginning that we were probably responsible,\u201d William H. McRaven, a retired admiral and former commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, said this week. \u201cIt seems to be taking longer than I would think. But again, not being in the inner circle, I can\u2019t tell you whether this is too long or not.\u201d<\/p>\n Senator Mark Kelly, Democrat of Arizona, pressed Admiral Cooper on Thursday to put back the officers moved from Civilian Harm Mitigation Response.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you were to find out that there was an error in the targeting process, would you reinstate some of those people that were removed from that team?\u201d Senator Kelly asked.<\/p>\n Admiral Cooper was noncommittal.<\/p>\n \u201cSir, it\u2019s a hypothetical,\u201d he replied. \u201cWe\u2019ll just see what the investigation says.\u201d<\/p>\n Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The senior officer overseeing U.S. combat operations in Iran told senators on Thursday that the destruction of an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":114449,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[6623,1368,39541,34,5702,39542,7582],"class_list":["post-114448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-iran","tag-defense-department","tag-hegseth","tag-human-rights-and-human-rights-violations","tag-iran","tag-pete","tag-shajarah-tayyebeh-minab","tag-united-states-defense-and-military-forces"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116575603499943417","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114448\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}