The investigative group Bellingcat says a newly released video “appears to contradict” U.S. President Donald Trump’s claim that Iran was behind an explosion at an Iranian school that killed more than 165 people at the start of the Middle East conflict.
Evidence increasingly points to U.S. responsibility for the Feb. 28 strike, which hit a school next to a Revolutionary Guard base in Minab, in southern Iran’s Hormozgan province.
Experts interviewed by The Associated Press (AP), using satellite imagery, suggest the school was likely hit during a rapid sequence of bombs dropped on the compound.
Bellingcat shared a three-second clip from the day of the attack, first circulated Sunday by Iran’s semiofficial Mehr news agency.
It shows a munition striking a building, sending a dark plume into the air that merges with smoke from earlier strikes. Trevor Ball, a Bellingcat researcher, geolocated the video to a site near the school, a finding confirmed independently by the AP.
Ball identified the munition as a Tomahawk cruise missile, which only the U.S. is known to possess in this war. It is the first evidence of a munition used in the strike.
U.S. Central Command has acknowledged using Tomahawk missiles in the war and released a photo of the USS Spruance, part of the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier group, firing a Tomahawk missile on Feb. 28 from within range of the school.
Complicating any assessment of the incident is the lack of images of bomb fragments from the blast. No independent agency has reached the site during the war to investigate.
When asked by a reporter Saturday whether the U.S. was responsible for the blast, which killed mostly children, Trump responded without providing evidence: “No, in my opinion, based on what I’ve seen, that was done by Iran.”
Trump added that Iran is “very inaccurate” with its munitions. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth quickly chimed in to say the U.S. was investigating.
Janina Dill, an expert on international law at Oxford University, wrote on X that even if the strike was a misidentification and the attacker believed the school was part of the neighboring IRGC base, it would still be “a very serious violation of international law.”
“Attackers are under an obligation to do everything feasible to verify the status of the targeted object,” she wrote.
Several factors point to a U.S. strike.
One is the launch of a military assessment of the incident. According to Pentagon instructions on processes for mitigating civilian harm, an assessment is launched after a group of investigators makes an initial determination that the U.S. military may bear culpability.
A U.S. official told the AP that the strike was likely U.S. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly on the sensitive matter.
Another factor is the location of the school, next to the Revolutionary Guard base and close to barracks for a naval unit. The U.S. military has focused on naval targets and acknowledged strikes in the province, including one near the school. Israel, which has denied conducting the strike, has focused on areas of Iran closer to Israel and has not reported any strikes south of Isfahan, 800 kilometers (500 miles) away.
Neither U.S. Central Command nor the Israeli military immediately replied to AP requests Monday for comment on Bellingcat’s analysis.
Speaking about the U.S. operation at a press conference March 2, Hegseth said, “America, regardless of what so-called international institutions say, is unleashing the most lethal and precise air power campaign in history.”
“No stupid rules of engagement,” he said. “No politically correct wars. We fight to win, and we don’t waste time or lives.”
