UN Panel Finds 'Reasonable Grounds' to Believe US Committed War Crimes in Iran Strikes

A United Nations-backed fact-finding mission has said it found "reasonable grounds" to believe that United States forces committed war crimes during the conflict with Iran, citing two airstrikes that it said caused heavy civilian casualties.

In a report submitted to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, the independent mission on Iran said it "found reasonable grounds to believe the United States committed the war crime of launching indiscriminate attacks resulting in the loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects."

The 18-page report examined two strikes. The first was a Tomahawk cruise missile strike in late February on the Shajareh Tayyebeh Primary School in Minab, which the mission said killed more than 150 people. The second was a strike that scattered clouds of tungsten pellets over a sports complex and a residential area in Lamerd, killing 22 people, according to the report.

The missile strike on the school in Minab has been described as the worst single incident of civilian harm resulting from US military operations in decades. In June, Bloomberg News reported that investigators were examining missteps that led to that strike, including US intelligence systems that were not connected to each other and a missed remark from a US intelligence analyst who had earlier pointed out that a former military facility was now operating as an elementary school.

The same mission also blamed the Iranian government for "gross human rights violations and crimes against humanity," including during recent violent crackdowns on protesters. Its findings cover both sides of the conflict, and neither government has accepted the conclusions drawn against it.

What the report is, and what it is not: it was commissioned by the UN's top human rights body, and its conclusions are findings of an expert mission, not judicial verdicts. The report is not binding, and it does not by itself establish individual criminal responsibility. Such determinations can only be made by a court with the appropriate jurisdiction. Even so, the report adds to a growing body of evidence that could eventually be used to pursue accountability in international courts.

The United States rejected the findings. "The UN Human Rights Council has accomplished nothing for human rights while spouting unserious nonsense for decades," White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in a statement. "The only party in this conflict that has committed war crimes is the Iranian regime, which has murdered thousands of its own people, killed Americans overseas, executed acts of terrorism in the Strait of Hormuz, and launched indiscriminate attacks against its neighbours in the region."

The Pentagon has previously said the Minab incident was under investigation. On Thursday, a Pentagon official said the investigation remains ongoing and that the department would not comment on a report from an outside organisation.

The competing claims now sit before the Human Rights Council, which will decide how, or whether, to act on the mission's findings. For the families of those killed in Minab and Lamerd, the central questions — what was targeted, on what intelligence, and who bears responsibility — remain unresolved, with the US military's own inquiry still open and no court yet seized of the matter.