by Ilya Maximov
[Regnum] The UN Fact-Finding Mission on Iran has released a report concluding that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the United States committed war crimes during Operation Epic Fury. This relates to at least two incidents: the attack on an elementary school in Minab and the attack on a sports center in Lamerda on February 28, 2026.
The United States, of course, was quick to dismiss these findings, declaring that the UN officials were "talking nonsense," but this did not affect the credibility of the evidence.
On February 28, 2026, the first day of the war, between 10:30 and 11:30 a.m. local time, Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School in Minab (Hormozgan Province) was hit by rockets. The school housed boys and girls aged 6 to 13.
The first rocket hit the area next to the building; the principal and teachers moved the children to the prayer room on the top floor. The second hit the top floor directly, killing most of the students. The teachers and the principal were also killed.
Iranian authorities reported 180 deaths, of which at least 120 were schoolchildren (73 boys and 47 girls).
Analysis of the debris and published videos revealed that the strike was carried out by a US Tomahawk cruise missile. The United States is the only party to the conflict to possess this weapon.
However, the Pentagon began to deny obvious culpability. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stated at the time: " In this conflict between us and Iran, there is only one side that never targets civilians, literally never. Iran does." He also promised to conduct his own investigation into the causes of the tragedy.
Later in May, US Central Command chief Brad Cooper confirmed that preliminary findings pointed to the possibility of a US strike, but called the investigation complex because the school was allegedly located on an active Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) base.
Now the UN mission has established that the school building was the intended target of the strike, and that this was not an accident.
"The mission concluded that the school building was the intended impact point and that the damage was not the result of a stray strike or collateral damage from the attack on the adjacent Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps compound," the report said.
The school building was indeed once part of a military base: until 2015, it was part of a complex affiliated with the IRGC Navy. However, by October of that year, it had been walled off, the guard towers demolished, and separate entrances from the street were created.
Playgrounds and a place for school assemblies were built near the building. Satellite images show children in the courtyard and murals on the walls. "There is no information indicating that the school was used for military purposes at that time," the authors of the document emphasized.
That same day, at around 5:10 PM, several hours after the school attack, an American missile struck a sports center in Lamerda (Fars Province). A women's volleyball team was inside the hall at the time of the strike.
The Shahid Haj Khalil Naimi Cultural and Sports Complex, also known as the Shahid Naimi Sports Hall, had a sign at its entrance and was used for sports and children's activities. It was visually separated from the adjacent IRGC complex.
"Based on satellite imagery, media reports, and open source information, the sports center is clearly separated from the adjacent Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps compound," the report states.
According to investigations, the attack involved an American Precision Strike Missile (PrSM) air-burst missile. Its lethal range is between 50 and 170 meters.
The strike killed 22 people, including two schoolgirls, two schoolboys, and a two-year-old girl.
More than 100 people were injured, according to some sources, up to 170. Nearby residential buildings, an elementary school, and a child development center were damaged.
The United States then again denied any involvement. On March 31, the United States Central Command stated that American forces had not carried out any strikes in the region at that time, blaming Iran itself.
"US forces did not conduct any strikes on the town of Lamerd or within a 30-mile radius on the first day of Operation Epic Fury... Furthermore, videos circulated by media outlets claiming US involvement do not show the PrSM precision-guided missile. The PrSM is 13 feet long. The munition depicted in the video appears to be twice that length, consistent with the size and silhouette of the Iranian Hoveyzeh cruise missile," the US military stated.
Experts immediately dismissed this claim as unconvincing. Even established Western media outlets like the BBC and NYT reported that independent analysts confirmed the use of PrSM.
Now the UN has confirmed this same conclusion. "The mission considers that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the munitions used in the airstrike on and around the Lamerda sports hall were PrSM missiles," the report states.
The weapons' identification renders the theory of Iranian involvement technically untenable in both cases. The United States, as well as Australia, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Japan, possess Tomahawks, but they are not involved in the conflict. The PrSM is unique to the United States.
However, the Americans are not giving up. White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said: "The only party in this conflict that has committed war crimes is the Iranian regime." She also added that the UN Human Rights Council "has achieved nothing in its mandate and has been spouting nonsense for decades."
The State Department, in turn, said it "does not trust the report's findings."
According to published data, the United States has effectively refused to cooperate with the UN mission's investigation. The mission sent requests for information and meetings on this matter to the American side, but received no response.
As noted, both the school and the sports center may have once been affiliated with the IRGC, but at the time of the strikes, they were clearly civilian objects. However, under international law, even their association with the IRGC does not deprive such objects of protection, as long as they are not used for military action.
The tragedy may have been caused by controversial personnel decisions made at the Pentagon. Even before the war, Hegseth had reduced the staff of the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence from approximately 200 to fewer than 40, and the Central Command Civilian Casualty Team from 10 to one.
The units haven't been shut down, but they've effectively lost their operational capability. The targeting system relies on a database that should be updated every three to five years, but this isn't happening. Furthermore, immediately after the strikes on civilian targets, The Washington Post claimed that the targets were selected using an AI system that made a mistake in analyzing the information.
"The Pentagon's intelligence agency, I think, was checking 100-200 Central Command targets a year. We all knew it wasn't enough, but the leadership thought it was fine," a US military official, who wished to remain anonymous, told Sky News.
"The fact that our secretary of defense, our head of Central Command, can't tell us whether they dropped a bomb on that location is completely unacceptable," Wes Bryant, the former head of the Pentagon's civilian damage assessment office, told Politico. He said this further highlights the "recklessness in the planning and execution of this campaign" and the fact that Pentagon leadership "has no idea what's going on."
While the published report covers only two incidents, the scale of the tragedy is far broader. In the first 11 days of the war alone, the US and Israel struck over 5,000 targets in Iran. More than 3,000 civilians are known to have fallen victim to the attacks.
Those responsible for many of these war crimes have yet to be determined. However, there is already no doubt that Washington will deny any accusations, even in the face of overwhelming objective evidence.
The question is whether they can do this forever, amid ever-louder calls to identify those responsible.
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