How Long Does It Take to Figure Out Who Bombed an Iranian School?

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It’s been a month since more than 100 girls were killed when their elementary school was bombed in the early hours of the US-Israeli war against Iran. Since then, all signs, including the preliminary findings of an investigation the Pentagon initiated as well as new video evidence, indicate that an American Tomahawk missile was responsible for the carnage.

And yet, the Trump administration has still not owned up to this terrible mistake (if that is what it was), which raises the question of how long it should reasonably take to confirm what everybody already knows.

Certainly not a month. Not in an age of precision targeting, cameras capable of capturing every strike, and computers monitoring every aspect of a war.

By now, the Pentagon must know exactly what happened and how – it just doesn’t want to tell anybody because it will make the US look bad.

After all, Secretary of State and acting National Security Adviser Marco Rubio just claimed that, unlike Iran, American forces are not bombing “embassies and hotels” but rather “military targets.”

More importantly, admitting that the US was responsible would contradict Donald Trump, who had concocted the story that Iran somehow bombed its own elementary school with missiles it doesn’t have amidst American strikes on adjacent military targets in the earliest stages of the war.

And making the boss look like a liar or a fool is the biggest no-no in this administration, especially for a loyal lapdog and avowed tough guy like former Fox News morning show host and current Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. Also, let’s be honest, someone who thinks that rules of engagement are “stupid” and helped get accused war criminals pardoned by Trump might not be too broken up about a few kids getting murdered.

But Americans, and the rest of the world, deserve some answers.

That’s certainly how Volker Türk, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, feels.

“Whatever differences countries have, we can all agree they will not be solved by killing schoolchildren,” he said Friday.

“In the case of this school, the onus is on those who carried out the attack to investigate it promptly, impartially, transparently and thoroughly, to determine the facts and lay the basis for accountability,” Türk added. “Senior US officials have said the strike is under investigation. I call for that process to be concluded as soon as possible, and for its findings to be made public. There must be justice for the terrible harm done.”

While this administration isn’t big on transparency, accountability, and justice, there are other reasons why it is important to find out and share what happened.

The errant attack was not only a military blunder but also a strategic one because it made it much easier for the Islamic regime in Tehran to rally the Iranian people behind the war and make the attackers look like the bad guys.

There is no telling how much damage the bombing of the school did to US efforts to get Iranians to rise up against their government.

Finally, there are reports that artificial intelligence choosing the targets for the attack was to blame for what happened.

This would be crucial information to have at a time when the Pentagon seems intent on using this unproven and error-prone technology to make war more “autonomous.”

Therefore, it is not just the Iranian parents of murdered children who deserve answers but also Americans who have to determine whether they want leaders who will recklessly rely on AI to wage war or whether they want to elect those who will put some guardrails on this technology.

Unfortunately, this administration’s track record when it comes to owning up to its many mistakes is so poor that we might have to wait a long time until the truth comes to light.