Newly surfaced footage from the February 28 attack on the Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school in Minab, Iran, shows what multiple weapons experts have identified as a U.S. Tomahawk cruise missile slamming into an adjacent military compound — directly contradicting President Trump’s claims that Iran was to blame for the deadliest single attack of the war so far.
The seven-second video, posted by Iran’s semi-official Mehr News Agency and filmed from a nearby construction site, captures the moment a missile strikes the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) naval base right next to the school.
As the camera pans, a massive column of smoke rises from the direction of the school building, where Iranian state media say at least 168 children and 14 teachers were killed.
Experts Say the Missile Could Only Be American
The evidence is damning in its specificity.
Sam Lair, a research associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, told CNN the weapon is consistent with a U.S. Tomahawk Land Attack Missile based on its physical profile — the distinctive cross-shaped fins, central wings, and tail assembly.
He also noted that the video was shot roughly 820 feet from the impact point, meaning the weapon had to be large enough to be visible at that distance, ruling out smaller U.S. munitions.
Trevor Ball, a former U.S. Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal technician who was the first to verify the footage for the investigative research group Bellingcat, confirmed the missile is a Tomahawk.
Jeffrey Lewis, a professor of global security at Middlebury College, agreed, calling the weapon “incredibly accurate” and noting that no other country involved in the conflict operates anything that matches its appearance.
Only the U.S. Navy fires Tomahawk missiles, launching them from ships and submarines.
Israel does not have them.
Iran does not have them.
No Gulf state ally has them.
The White House Story Keeps Shifting
Despite this growing mountain of evidence, Trump told reporters on Saturday that “based on what I’ve seen, that was done by Iran,” calling Iranian weapons “very inaccurate.”
His administration has been less definitive.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, when asked if Trump’s claim was true, dodged the question and instead said that Iran is “the only side that targets civilians.”
Before Trump’s statement, the White House had not ruled out U.S. responsibility.
U.S. Central Command has said only that it would be “inappropriate to comment” because the incident is under investigation. The Pentagon did not respond to questions about the use of a Tomahawk missile.
But the administration’s own officials have already placed the U.S. military at the scene. Gen. Dan Caine, the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, confirmed in a briefing that the U.S. targeted southern Iran while Israel focused on the north.
Caine himself stated that Tomahawks launched by the Navy were among the first weapons fired.
A Defense Department map of the first 100 hours of strikes appeared to include the Minab area among U.S. targets.
The School Was on an Abandoned Military Base
The school’s location next to an IRGC facility has been used to muddy the waters, but the facts on the ground tell a clear story.
Satellite imagery reviewed by multiple news organizations shows that the school and the military base were once part of the same compound but were physically separated by a wall between 2013 and 2016, with a separate entrance built for the school.
According to NBC News, local officials say the base had been abandoned for over a decade and all military personnel had been relocated.
NPR found that the base’s airstrip was removed in 2024 and the land was being developed for housing.
The Guardian found no indication the school served any military purpose and determined that the adjacent compound buildings were a medical clinic and a pharmacy.
In other words, the U.S. military appears to have launched a precision strike against a facility that hadn’t been operational in years — and in doing so, killed more than 160 children at the school next door.
What the Evidence Actually Shows
N.R. Jenzen-Jones, a munitions expert and director of Armament Research Services, told CNN that the satellite imagery and videos show “multiple simultaneous or near-simultaneous strikes” hitting both the compound and the school.
He rejected speculation that the school was accidentally hit by misfiring Iranian air defenses, pointing out that the base buildings sustained damage consistent with precision-guided munitions, not missiles gone off course.
A CBC investigation concluded the school was bombed as part of a precision strike against the adjacent military complex and that the hit on the school was either a weapons system failure or a serious intelligence-gathering error by U.S. Central Command.
Kenneth Roth, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch, said it is “increasingly clear” the U.S. was responsible, adding that the school was hit by a precision weapon and raising “urgent questions regarding why U.S. intelligence was so shoddy that it treated the school as no different from the adjacent military facility.”
According to Minab’s mayor and the Iranian Ministry of Education, the school was struck three separate times — a triple-tap that makes accidental fire even harder to argue.
Footage from the aftermath shows smoke pouring from the school’s windows, past walls decorated with murals of crayons, children, and apples.
168 Children Deserve Answers
Iran held funerals for the victims beginning March 2. Witnesses described scenes that no one should have to put into words — rescue workers pulling children’s remains from the rubble of a building that should have been the safest place in their world.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian responded by saying that attacks on schools are attacks on a nation’s future and called on the world to condemn the strike, stating that targeting children violates the most fundamental humanitarian principles.
The evidence from multiple independent investigations — CNN, the Washington Post, NPR, NBC News, the BBC, the CBC, the Guardian, CBS News, and Bellingcat — all points in the same direction.
A U.S. Tomahawk missile struck a compound next to a functioning elementary school full of children, on a base that had been abandoned for years.
The president blamed Iran.
The facts say otherwise.
The children of Minab deserve accountability. So does the truth.
