A School Was Bombed and the Report Can Wait for the Election

More than 150 people, including at least 123 children, died in a strike on a school in Minab. Pentagon officials intend to hold the findings until after the November midterms. The Pentagon says the inquiry is still open.

On 28 February 2026, in the first hours of the war with Iran, a strike hit the Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school in Minab, in southern Iran. More than 150 people were killed. At least 123 of them were children. Other counts from the scene put the dead at 156 or more, among them teachers and parents who had come with the children. The differences in the toll are the difference between bodies counted on different days. They are not a reason to argue about whether a school was destroyed. An internal American investigation began in March. People familiar with it say flawed intelligence, outdated images and an over-reliance on automatic targeting tools all played a part. They also say the report has been essentially finished for months. In October, officials familiar with the Pentagon's intentions said the findings are to be held at least until after the midterm elections in November. A Pentagon official, asked directly, said the investigation is ongoing and that there was no update to announce.

An unfinished label on a finished file

Hold those two statements together, because the scandal is the gap between them. If the investigation is genuinely open, say what is still being checked, and let the families know which question their children are waiting on. If the file has been complete for months, then "ongoing" is a drawer, not a process. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who sits on the armed services and intelligence committees, called the hold disgraceful and asked for the report. In July she and more than two dozen senators, including Jack Reed, had already written for a briefing and for a plan to stop a repeat. Admiral Bradley Cooper, who leads the regional command that ran the inquiry, told lawmakers the work was near completion and that he would share it when it was done. President Trump, asked whether anyone would be held accountable, said mistakes are made and war is nasty, and he has suggested more than once that the strike was not America's fault. The early internal look, reported in March, had pointed the other way.

A school full of children is not a detail to be scheduled around a campaign. The calendar is the confession.

Congress has started to write the obligation the Pentagon will not accept. The House defence bill for the year that began on 1 October would require the final report to be given to the armed services committee within 30 days of completion. The Senate draft pushes for the Minab file and for other civilian-harm inquiries. Negotiators have not finished a single text. A law that arrives after an election is still a law. It does not give the parents of Minab the autumn they were owed. There is a further fear, among members of Congress and inside the defence department, that the finished paper will be classified and shown to a handful of cleared members, which is a way of saying the public may know the children died without being allowed to know why the bomb thought they were a target.

What hiding a mistake does to the next target

Civilian-harm staff at American commands have been cut back sharply under this defence secretary. A system that investigates itself slowly, and publishes itself never, will hit the next school with the same tools: old pictures, a model that is sure, a chain of command that would rather be sure than late. Trump's line that war is nasty is true and useless. Nastiness is the reason for a report, not the substitute for one. Iran's government will use the dead children whether Washington speaks or not. The reason to publish is not to help Tehran. It is to stop the next crew from trusting a picture that was already wrong. Midterms are a domestic event. The school was not in a swing district. It was in Minab, and the children are already buried, and the only thing still being timed is the embarrassment of the people who sent the plane.

Classification is a second burial

If the finished inquiry is stamped secret and shown only to a cleared committee, the public will have the children's names and not the reason the target was chosen. Old imagery and an automatic tool are not a mystery that needs a generation of silence. They are a method. Methods that are hidden get reused. Gillibrand's demand is the minimum a legislature owes: the findings, the names of the people who approved the strike, and the change that stops the next school from matching a bad picture. An election is a reason to be ashamed. It is not a reason to schedule the shame.

More than 150 dead, most of them children, do not become less dead because a campaign would rather talk about prices. The report is the respect still available.