Within minutes of a strike on a school full of children on the first day of the war against Iran, Pentagon officials knew that the U.S. military was responsible for leveling the site. But they thought they had hit an Iranian base.<\/p>\n
Within days of the strike, after a stream of news reports containing satellite images, videos and first-person accounts of the episode, American officials privately acknowledged what had become increasingly clear: that the U.S. military had made a tragic mistake and hit a school.<\/p>\n
And within two weeks of the strike, the first part of a preliminary investigation<\/a> into what happened was complete: Military officials concluded that the Feb. 28 Tomahawk missile strike on the school was the result of a targeting error caused by outdated data.<\/p>\n At least 175 people, most of them children, were killed, according to Iranian officials.<\/p>\n And yet, more than 100 days after the strike, U.S. officials have not publicly acknowledged responsibility for the deaths, among the thousands of civilians killed in the region before a tentative cease-fire was reached this weekend.<\/p>\n The investigation is now complete and awaiting sign-off from senior military leaders, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and the White House, according to military officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the report has not been released. When it will be made public, and whether anyone will lose their job, is unclear.<\/p>\n \u201cThe incident is still under investigation,\u201d the Pentagon said in a statement last week when asked about the silence.<\/p>\n The reasons for the delay, according to officials with knowledge of the investigation, include a typically slow-moving bureaucratic review process involving several government agencies, a dose of Pentagon self-protection and disbelief on the part of the intelligence and targeting agencies involved that their data could possibly have been so catastrophically wrong.<\/p>\n That has combined with a civilian leadership at the Defense Department that views such tragedies as an unavoidable cost of war, the officials said.<\/p>\n Mr. Hegseth has routinely espoused \u201clethality over legality,\u201d and that American troops should not be constrained by concerns about civilian harm. \u201cNo stupid rules of engagement,\u201d he has said.<\/p>\n Last year, Mr. Hegseth began moving to effectively terminate the Pentagon offices that focus on preventing and responding to civilian harm during U.S. combat operations. Employees at the Pentagon\u2019s Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response office, which deals with policy related to limiting risk to noncombatants, were informed that their office would close. They were also told that the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence, which handles training and procedures, would shut down as well.<\/p>\n The Pentagon\u2019s inspector general concluded in a report released last month that the U.S. military no longer had the personnel or tools needed to comply with its civilian casualties and harm policy, which is required by federal law.<\/p>\n An Analyst Notices an Issue<\/p>\n For nearly a decade, U.S. officials said, their data indicated that the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school, in the town of Minab, was a military base.<\/p>\n The school is near buildings used by Iran\u2019s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Navy, and the site was originally part of the base.<\/p>\n The investigation found, officials say, that targeting officials were using imagery that had not been updated in seven years. That imagery, they said, did not show a school next to the base.<\/p>\n But several years ago, one analyst noticed that the building appeared to be a school, three officials said.<\/p>\n That analyst informed one other person, the officials said. But the information did not make it to targeting officials, and intelligence and military officials continued to re-validate the site as a legitimate target for bombing.<\/p>\n