In the past several weeks, we have heard a lot of claims about the tragedy at a girl’s school in southern Iran. A lot of lies. Denials. Cries of pain. Everyone blaming everyone else, but themselves of course. Last week, several bloggers and pundits (Americans, not just Muslim) have flat-out stated that The Donald and his henchman Hegseth, “deliberately targeted” the girl’s school. Incredibly serious charges, portraying the tragedy as much worse that it seemed to be.

Here at TPOL, we understand the claim, but submit that it is not so cut and dried as that. This is what one of our staff members wrote early last week, privately to a correspondent.  

According to a map I saw the day of that attack, and Google Earth and lat-long provided by Al-Araby TV, this Shajareh Tayeben School is immediately adjacent to what seems to be a military installation. In fact, CBS has a satellite photo map identifying this compound as being an IRGC facility. It also shows damaged structures in the actual installation, said to be from the same attack.

The school building itself is something that could be identified as a command or headquarters compound separated from the rest of the installation (walled, about 160 x 370 meters): security gates, wall, guard/watch towers, gensets, water tower, barracks etc., including what could be military vehicles, commo antennas, and even an officer’s or NCO club. 

The wall between the school grounds and the rest of the compound was not even built until sometime between 2013 and 2016, but the installation has been there for at least 10 years before that.

So there are several alternatives to “deliberately targeting a school.”

1. Mis-identification of the school building as still being a part of the installation (a more secure, restricted portion than the rest of the compound but with a street connecting both areas). (Photo analysis is not a science, it is an art and I have very little confidence in DIA, USAF or USA or USN intel analysts, and less in other federal agencies, have had to work with and around them for 40+ years.)
2. Disinformation fed to USAF (DoD/DoW) and/or IDF intel about the buildings by Iranian counter-intelligence. (Again, little confidence on my part as to the competence of US assets, from personal experience and what has happened just in the last quarter-century.)
3. Anti-missile defense missile knocking a warhead or bomb (even a smart one) off course, as little as 80 meters (distance between the nearest large, apparently multi-story building in the compound, and the school).
4. Mechanical/electrical failure of the warhead or its guidance system. Again, you and I know that happens. Reason we had the old complex at Green River [Utah] and have White Sands [New Mexico], etc.: the equipment is always Rube Goldbergian and fails more than the Pentagon wants to admit.
5. Incompetence on the part of the operator sitting back with his quarter taped to his control desk
6. A red-on-red hit: an Iranian SAM that missed its target and fell here. Nobody talks about that, in (for example) England or Germany in WW2 or Israel and Syria today.

That said, what earthly reason would Hegseth or Trump have to deliberately target a school?

There is nothing to be gained, not even the old LaMay claim that massive bombing of cities in Germany and Japan weakened the will to wage war. And another argument against this being deliberate is the recognized and admitted shortage of munitions after Ukraine and supplying Israel in Gaza and the last attack on Iran.  

Now, I’ve read that there was no real military value to the installation. But it is less than 25 km from the coast, more than 75 km as the bird flies from Bandar Abbas (the major city in the area) and along a primary highway: anyone who has to plan a defense against a potential landing invasion would see the advantage to having a command nexus in Minab, and not just a little National Guard-style armory.

So I reserve judgment on this. “The Critical Thought” needs to be a bit more critical in their thinking.

Since then, we have learned that the Pentagon has indeed admitted that our staffer’s alternative #1 is in essence correct. Those planning the target lists for USAF and USN missiles were apparently using twelve-year old data and photography. That is, from 2014. Incredible as this is, it illustrates to all the stupidity that constantly plagues military organizations, and especially the civilians and civilian agencies that support military headquarters and units. That get soldiers and civilians killed senselessly and needlessly.

The building was indeed part of the IRGC base until 2016, when a new wall was built dividing that area and that building from the rest. Apparently as part of the conversion of the building into a school.

But American intel agencies: analysts and reviewers, did not know this.

We submit this is not an excuse: there is no excuse for a negligent action like this. No excuse for killing innocent children, or even their teachers and staff. And we cannot even blame the IRGC or the tyrants of the Islamic Republic for perhaps attempting to use a girl’s school as a human shield for their military base. The blame rests solely on the intelligence agencies of the FedGov, both civilian and military. And therefore, upon their superiors. No, not just The Donald and Hegseth, but every superior leading these agencies from 2016 to 2026: Democrat as well as Republican: Obama, Trump, Biden, and all their SecDef and Chiefs of Staff, and right down to the captain/lieutenant and/or GS-11 that failed to do their job correctly, failed to train and supervise others, and failed to notify their own superiors of the problems.

This is, of course, just one more reason to take power away from government, to limit military forces to actual defense of the Constitution, the States, and the people of those States. The government officials and staff cannot be trusted to do what is needed.