Evidence suggests the deadly blast at an Iranian school was likely a US airstrike

 

Pentagon US Iran© ASSOCIATED PRESS

Satellite images, expert analysis and information released by the U.S. and Israeli militaries suggest an explosion that killed scores of Iranian students at a school was likely caused by U.S. airstrikes that also hit an adjacent compound associated with the regime's

The Feb. 28 strike, which had the highest reported civilian death toll since the war began, has come under staunch criticism from the United Nations and human rights monitors. More than 165 people were killed, most of them of children, in the blast during school hours at Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School, according to Iranian state media.

Satellite images taken Wednesday and reviewed by the The Associated Press show most of the school in the city of Minab, some 1,100 kilometers (680 miles) southeast of Tehran, reduced to rubble, a crescent shape punched into its roof. Experts say the tight pattern of the damage visible on the satellite photos is consistent with a targeted airstrike.

Iran has blamed Israel and the United States for the blast. Neither country has accepted responsibility. Asked about the strike at the school at a Pentagon press briefing Wednesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said, “All I can say is that we’re investigating that. We, of course, never target civilian targets. But we’re taking a look and investigating that.”

Several factors point to a U.S. strike. One is the launching of an assessment of the incident by the U.S. military. According to the Pentagon's instructions on processes for mitigating civilian harm, an assessment is launched after a group of investigators make an initial determination that the U.S. military may bear culpability.

Another is the location of the school — next to a base of the Revolutionary Guard in Hormozgan Province and close to a barracks for its naval brigade. The U.S. military has focused on naval targets and acknowledged strikes in the province, including one in the vicinity of the school.

Israel, which has denied conducting the strike, has focused on areas of Iran closer to Israel and hasn’t reported conducting any strikes south of Isfahan, 800 kilometers (500 miles) away. The U.S. is operating warships in the Arabian Sea, including the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, within range of the school.

When asked by the AP about its findings, the U.S. military’s Central Command said, “It would be inappropriate to comment given the incident is under investigation.”

“My assumption is that probably there were some activities recently there and they detected and tracked them, but ... they weren't aware or didn't have an up-to-date database that a girls' school was there and they bombed it," said Farzin Nadimi, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who studies Iran’s military.

Satellite images show damage

The school is adjacent to a walled compound labeled on maps as the Seyyed Al-Shohada Cultural Complex of the Guard, which included a pharmacy, gym and sports field.

In addition to the school, satellite photos show that blasts struck at least five buildings in the Guard compound, leaving the area pocked with craters, charred holes in roofs and piles of rubble. Historical satellite imagery shows the school building was not separated from the Guard compound until about a decade ago when a wall was built between them.

Iranian online map applications show a living quarters for the Assef Brigades about 150 meters (165 yards) from the school, inside the Revolutionary Guard compound. The 16th Assef Coastal Missile Group is part of the Guard's navy, Nadimi said. The 1st Naval District, which the Assef Brigades belong to, is responsible for the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which a fifth of all oil and natural gas traded passes. The strait has been a particular point of conflict in the war.

In the aftermath of the strike, video from Iran's state broadcaster verified by the AP using satellite imagery showed dozens of fresh graves dug at a nearby cemetery. Nadimi said it is likely the school taught daughters of Guard personnel.

The strike has drawn wide condemnation from the secretary-general of the United Nations and international human rights groups. The criticism comes amid reports that airstrikes have also hit other schools in Iran.

The London-based conflict monitoring organization Airwars is reviewing three other school strikes that caused casualties. In addition to those, in the last 48 hours the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency reported at least two more schools were struck.

Targeting schools would be a clear violation of international laws governing armed conflict, said Elise Baker, a senior staff lawyer at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based nonprofit think tank.

“Strikes can only legally target military objectives and combatants, but the school was a civilian object and the students and teachers were civilians,” Baker said. “The school’s proximity to (Guard) facilities and the attendance of children of (Guard) members at the school does not change that conclusion: It was a civilian object.”

Pattern of damage suggests targeted strike

Three experts told the AP the satellite imagery and videos from the scene strongly suggested multiple munitions hit the compound. Complicating any assessment is the lack of images of bomb fragments from the blast. No independent agency has reached the site during the war to investigate, either.

There are no craters or evidence of bombs hitting in the surrounding neighborhood, suggesting a great degree of accuracy, said Corey Scher, a researcher who uses satellite imagery and radar data to study landscape changes in armed conflict zones.

“All the strikes are clustered within the walled-off compound," Scher said. "That’s one level of precision at the block level. And then most of the strikes are basically leading to direct hits on buildings. That’s another level of precision.”

Scher said the school and the other buildings struck in the compound showed damage consistent with the use of air-to-surface munitions.

“They didn’t explode in the air above the building," he said. “It looks like the explosion happened at the time they hit the surface, whether it was the building or the ground."

Sean Moorhouse, a former British Army officer and explosive ordnance disposal expert, said the available satellite imagery was insufficient to determine exactly what type of munitions were used in the strike, but he said the visible damage was consistent with what would be expected with impacts from multiple 2,000-pound (900-kilogram) high-explosive warheads. He said the multiple precise impacts would undercut any suggestion that a malfunctioning Iranian missile hit the school.

N.R. Jenzen-Jones, the director of Armament Research Services, said the school and Guard compound were targeted with “multiple simultaneous or near-simultaneous strikes." He said in videos of the school taken immediately after the strike, smoke can be seen rising from the Guard compound. There were also impacts on multiple buildings visible in satellite images and media reports citing witnesses who said they heard multiple explosions.

“If indeed it is confirmed that an American or Israeli strike hit the school, there are several potential points of failure in the targeting cycle," Jenzen-Jones said. “We might be seeing an intelligence failure, likely rather early in the process, which misidentified the target or failed to update a targeting list following the building’s change in use.”

___

Biesecker reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Konstantin Toropin in Washington contributed to this report.

Evidence suggests the deadly blast at an Iranian school was likely a US airstrike

Story by Julia Frankel and Michael Biesecker

Iran’s plot to turn Trump’s glory war into his worst nightmare

 

Iran wants to turn Donald Trump‘s war into a global and domestic nightmare by inflicting such huge military, political and economic pain that it forces the President to abandon his campaign.

The conflict, now in its second week, is becoming a battle of wills and pain thresholds as missiles and drones rain down across the Middle East and beyond.

The Islamic Republic, facing an existential threat, is focused on endurance and survival – banking on Trump’s fear of a forever war and a rising backlash from his own supporters.

Iran knows it cannot defeat the combined military might of the US and Israel. However, the regime is using every lever at its disposal to expand and extend the conflict in the hope of making the cost too high for its enemies.

Israel has said the war is entering a more intense “next phase”, and the bellicose US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth promised “firepower over Iran and over Tehran is about to surge dramatically”.

Trump has demanded “unconditional surrender”.

But that follows days of changing messages from the administration that suggest the US has no coherent war plan. And as speculation builds that ground troops could be sent into Iran, the shadows of Iraq and Afghanistan will loom large in Trump’s mind.

Iran will use Trump’s domestic weakness

Iran understands that Trump fears another forever war.

After railing against foreign wars and campaigning on a pledge to be a “peace president”, his Iran campaign looks like a betrayal to many of his “America First” supporters.

Already, Iran has denied Trump the shock-and-awe victory picture he craves and achieved with the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro earlier this year.

Iran has expanded the conflict to America’s Gulf allies and even further afield: in Turkey, Cyprus and Azerbaijan. At least six US soldiers have been killed, and the White House is struggling to land on a convincing case for the attack.

Some 59 per cent of Americans disapprove of the decision to strike Iran and 60 per cent oppose sending US ground troops – compared with just 12 per cent who approve, according to a CNN poll.

“This is already a domestic problem,” Lewis Galvin, lead Americas analyst at the intelligence consultancy Sibylline, told The i Paper. “It hasn’t really been popular at any point… There’s an already large narrative circulating that the US was pushed into this by Israel, and to an extent Saudi.”

If Iran can make the conflict another deadly quagmire, Trump could be forced to retreat, leaving the regime intact.

“Tehran wants to extend and expand this conflict because it knows that Trump may not have the patience for a long conflict. Nor does the President’s domestic constituency, which opposes open-ended American interventions abroad,” said Bilal Saab, associate fellow of the Middle East and North Africa programme at Chatham House.

Iran’s plot to turn Trump’s glory war into his worst nightmare

Story by Isabella Bengoechea

Kim Jong Un hits out at 'shameless' Trump for Iran war as expert warns 'he's rattled

 

North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un has launched a scathing attack on the US and Israeli attack on Iran, calling the missile and drone bombardment of the Middle Eastern country "shameless"

The attack was termed "a shameless rogue act of the US and Israel” and "an illegal act of aggression", in a statement released by Kim's government earlier this week.

The North Korean leader has been hesitant at times to criticise the US President, especially when compared to his attitudes towards previous regimes.

Many are now speculating that this change in tone suggests Kim has been angered by Trump's aggressive manoeuvres to kill Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and arrest Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

The despot is unsettled, experts say, and worries that he could be next on Trump's list.

Speaking to the Korea Herald, political academic Lim Eul-chul warned that Kim is furious about the killing of the Iranian leader, specifically, with whom the US had reportedly been pursuing "nuclear negotiations" similar to the "unconditional dialogue" promised to North Korea.

North Korea may focus on the fact that Iran was ultimately attacked despite pursuing nuclear negotiations and attempting to reach certain agreements,” said the professor at Kyungnam University’s Institute for Far Eastern Studies.

“There is virtually zero chance that Pyongyang trusts the sincerity of Washington’s offer of ‘unconditional dialogue.’”

Lim also revealed that Kim is likely to be extremely concerned by the level of intelligence the US had on both Maduro and Khamenei, worrying that he may be being surveilled in a similar fashion.

“The years of precise intelligence accumulation that enabled the US to eliminate Iran’s supreme leader, along with the swift execution demonstrated in ‘Operation Epic Fury,’ represent more than a simple warning to Kim Jong-un — they amount to an existential threat,” he said

According to Lim, North Korea is “fully aware that the US intelligence-gathering capabilities and strike patterns displayed in Iran could be applied to North Korea in the same way, or even more precisely.”

He warns that, far from pushing the dictator towards the negotiation table, these fears may push Kim to isolate North Korea further.

Kim Jong Un hits out at 'shameless' Trump for Iran war as expert warns 'he's rattled'

Story by Edward Easton

Epstein was named in major DOJ probe — until Trump shut it down:

 

Jeffrey Epstein was the target of a sprawling federal investigation into alleged money laundering, drug smuggling and sex trafficking operation by a specialized unit shut down last year by the Trump administration.

The Federal Drug Enforcement Administration opened the investigation into Epstein and a dozen other individuals in 2015, according to five sources close to the case, as part of a longstanding probe into organized crime, although none of the targets were charged with any crimes and it's not clear how long the case remained open, reported Bloomberg.

"It began after an informant told authorities that Epstein was involved in the illicit funding and distribution of so-called club drugs, including ecstasy, ketamine and methamphetamines," Bloomberg reported, based on the sources who asked not to be named so they could discuss sensitive law enforcement matters.

"Initial information about the 2015 investigation surfaced in January in a heavily redacted document that was released by the DOJ," the report added. "These new details about the investigation deepen the mystery surrounding the serial sex abuser, and reveal a striking level of scrutiny into him that extended beyond the federal sex-crimes probe that has captured international attention for years. They also reflect a pattern: As Epstein famously cultivated high-profile connections with Wall Street executives, politicians and royalty, federal authorities secretly kept their eyes on him."

At least eight U.S. government agencies – including the FBI, DEA and the Treasury Department – were investigating Epstein at the time of his 2009 release from custody in Florida after pleading guilty to soliciting a minor for prostitution, according to documents released in January by the Department of Justice.

"The documents show that law enforcement agencies kept tabs on Epstein by tracking his movements, building dossiers on his connections and following his money as it moved through offshore accounts," Bloomberg reported. "Foreign governments did likewise. The U.S. Secret Service’s White House division and Harvard University’s campus police conducted background checks on Epstein years after he was released from custody in Florida."

The DEA investigation, which was conducted by the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces, or OCDETF, was launched in December 2010, long before Epstein or anyone in his circle were targeted, as part of a drug trafficking probe into nightclubs in New York, Mexico and elsewhere.

"The lead DEA agent on Operation Chain Reaction wrote in a status update [around January 2015] that he expected the case to wrap up in a few months after all the defendants [in separate cases] were sentenced," Bloomberg reported, according to the sources. "But in a twist, one suspected drug trafficker became an informant and told federal agents that Epstein had been involved in the funding and distribution of ecstasy, ketamine and methamphetamines, the people familiar with the matter said. The informant also said that Epstein ran a prostitution ring."

The DEA asked OCDETF’s fusion center to prepare a “target profile” on Epstein and 12 others in April 2015, saying the agency needed that information as part of its investigation into money laundering, drug trafficking and the procurement of Eastern European prostitutes for high profile clientele, the sources told Bloomberg.

"An analyst at the fusion center wrote in the 69-page [target profile] that the DEA’s investigation involved 'illegitimate wire transfers which are tied to illicit drug and/or prostitution activities occurring in the U.S. Virgin Islands and New York City,'" Bloomberg reported, citing a heavily redacted copy released by the DOJ.

CBS News first reported on that redacted document last week, and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) asked the DEA last month to provide an unredacted copy of that target profile and additional details about its “mystery investigation" into Epstein, 12 associates and two businesses.

"Bloomberg has learned their identities from the people familiar with the matter," the outlet reported. "They include Epstein’s lawyer, Darren Indyke; his brother, Mark; and his accountants, Bella Klein, Harry Beller and Richard Kahn. Indyke and Kahn are co-executors of Epstein’s estate. Epstein died while in federal custody in August 2019."

"The two businesses are Wagging Tail Entertainment and Ossa Properties Inc. Peggy Siegal, an entertainment publicist and friend of Epstein’s, did business under Wagging Tail, according to multiple emails in the DOJ’s Epstein documents," the report added. "Ossa is a real estate company owned by Mark Epstein. Anthony Barrett, who was an executive at Ossa Properties, was also named in the target profile. Some of Epstein's victims have said in civil lawsuits that they were sexually abused in a building managed by Ossa Properties."

A representative for Siegal said she was never questioned in the case or even aware of it and is no longer affiliated with Wagging Tail, while Mark Epstein also said he was not aware of the probe or questioned as part of it, and an attorney for Indyke and Kahn said they were not aware of its existence.

Klein, Beller and Barrett did not respond to requests for comment, Bloomberg reported, and six women named as targets were not identified because publicly available information indicates that they could be considered Epstein victims.

Operation Chain Reaction was officially closed on June 16, 2023, and OCDETF was defunded and shut down in May 2025 as part of the Trump administration's sweeping government cuts in the early days of his second administration.

Epstein was found dead in prison in August 2019 while awaiting trial for sex trafficking charges.

Epstein was named in major DOJ probe — until Trump shut it down: report

Story by Travis Gettys

 

Turkey asks Britain's MI6 to step up protection of Syria's Sharaa

 

ISTANBUL/DAMASCUS/LONDON, March 6 (Reuters) - Turkey’s intelligence agency asked its British counterpart MI6 last month to take a larger role in protecting Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa after recent assassination plots, according to five people familiar with the matter. 

The request highlights efforts by foreign allies to shore up a country still shaken by sporadic violence 15 months after the overthrow of president Bashar al-Assad, with the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran now rattling the wider region. 

Those allies see Sharaa as crucial to preventing a relapse into sectarian fighting or civil war, after 14 years of civil conflict drove millions of refugees abroad and allowed Islamic State to control swathes of Syria.

The militants last month stepped up attacks on military and security personnel across Syria and declared Sharaa, a former rebel, their "number one foe". 

It was unclear what specifically Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization, or MIT, had asked of MI6, or what new role, if any, MI6 had taken up. 

ANXIETY RISES IN SYRIA OVER ISLAMIC STATE

Turkey, Britain and the U.S. last year threw their backing behind Sharaa to try to reunite and rebuild his country of 26 million. London and Washington have scrapped most sanctions on Syria and on Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the Islamist group he once led. 

The sources who spoke to Reuters requested anonymity owing to the sensitivity of the matter. 

MIT, the Turkish foreign ministry, Britain's foreign office and Syria's defence and interior ministries did not respond to requests for comment. 

The sources, including Syrian and foreign officials, all cited rising anxiety over a series of reported Islamic State plots to kill Sharaa. 

A Turkish source said that MIT, which has played a key role in helping the new government to establish itself, appealed to MI6 for more support after one such incident last month. A senior Syrian security source said the request came after a “high-risk assassination plot”, adding that MIT, MI6 and Syrian authorities were constantly sharing intelligence. 

Details of the plot were unclear.

A separate Western intelligence source briefed on the matter believed Turkey wanted to introduce a Western presence in Damascus to provide something of a buffer between the agencies of Turkey and Israel, currently at loggerheads.

REPORTED ASSASSINATION ATTEMPTS AGAINST SHARAA

Last year, Sharaa and two senior cabinet ministers were targeted by Islamic State in five foiled assassination attempts, according to the U.N. Office of Counter-Terrorism. In November, Reuters reported that Syrian authorities had foiled two of the attempts.

Describing Sharaa as a "watchdog" of the global anti-Islamic State coalition, the group mounted six attacks on Syrian authorities last month in what it called a “new phase".

On Thursday, Damascus openly acknowledged for the first time that it coordinates with MIT, saying they had cooperated to foil an Islamic State attack in the capital.

Turkish security sources said MIT had identified a team of three preparing remote bomb attacks, enabling Syrian counterparts to prevent an "imminent assault". 

A U.S. diplomat briefed on the matter said MIT's request to MI6 had been prompted by the Islamic State resurgence. 

The Western intelligence source said the two agencies could intensify joint planning and technical operations, but that no decision had been made on whether to send British personnel to Damascus.

A Syrian security source said a physical British presence would be "highly risky". They said MI6 had been discussed at a meeting in Damascus on February 26 between a delegation headed by Britain's special envoy for Syria, Ann Snow, and Syria's deputy interior minister, Major General Abdulqader Tahan.

Sharaa was a commander of Al Qaeda's Nusra Front in Syria before cutting ties with the group in 2016, then led a coalition of Islamist rebel factions in late 2024 to topple Assad.

 Exclusive - Turkey asks Britain's MI6 to step up protection of Syria's Sharaa, sources say

(Reporting by Jonathan Spicer, Feras Dalatey and Jonathan Saul; Additional reporting by Michael Holden; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

Epstein files: DOJ releases 'mistakenly withheld' documents naming Trump as Bondi faces bipartisan subpoena

 

Five House Republicans just voted to subpoena their own party's attorney general. That doesn't happen often.

On 4 March, the House Oversight Committee approved a motion 24-19 to compel Attorney General Pam Bondi to testify about the Justice Department's handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files. The next day, the DOJ released documents it admitted were 'incorrectly coded as duplicative,' files containing uncorroborated accusations against President Donald Trump that should have been public months ago.

The Republicans Who Crossed Party Lines

These people broke with their party to support the subpoena. These aren't moderates in safe seats. They're conservative lawmakers who've calculated that blocking transparency on the Epstein files carries more political risk than defying GOP leadership.

・Nancy Mace of South Carolina

・Tim Burchett of Tennessee

・Michael Cloud of Texas

・Lauren Boebert of Colorado

・Scott Perry of Pennsylvania

November 2026 midterms loom. Voters are watching.

'AG Bondi claims the DOJ has released all of the Epstein files. The record is clear: they have not,' Mace wrote on X after the vote. 'Three million documents have been released, and we still don't have the full truth. Videos are missing. Audio is missing. Logs are missing.'

Representative Ro Khanna, a California Democrat who co-sponsored the Epstein Transparency Act, called it a straightforward accountability issue. 'It's about transparency,' he told ABC News. 'It has nothing to do with being a Democrat or a Republican. It's about going after predators.'

What the 'Coding Error' Actually Means

The DOJ blamed the missing files on a clerical mistake. Officials said the documents were tagged as duplicates when they weren't.

'When flagged by the public, we immediately work to correct any errors that the team may have initially made,' the department said, according to CNBC.

The newly released records include FBI interview summaries with a woman who contacted agents after Epstein's 2019 arrest. She made accusations against Trump, though the DOJ noted in January that some documents contain 'untrue and sensationalist claims against President Trump that were submitted to the FBI right before the 2020 election.' Trump has denied all wrongdoing connected to Epstein.

Representative Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, has alleged that searching Trump's name in unredacted files returned 'more than a million' results. He later clarified to Axios that he searched 'Trump' and 'Donald or Don,' and couldn't verify each result individually. The figure remains unconfirmed.

What Raskin did confirm: he found a 2009 email exchange between Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell that he says contradicts Trump's claim that he expelled Epstein from Mar-a-Lago years earlier.

Street Art Goes Viral

Public anger has spilled beyond Capitol Hill. On 1 March, a guerrilla art installation dubbed the 'Jeffrey Epstein Walk of Shame' appeared in Farragut Square, a five-minute walk from the White House.

The stickers mimic Hollywood's Walk of Fame but feature Epstein's face and names of figures mentioned in DOJ files. Each carries a QR code linking to department documents or news articles. Names include Bill Clinton, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and the imprisoned Ghislaine Maxwell. A sticker for Elon Musk was torn off within hours, though its QR code remained.

The installation spread across social media within a day.

For many Americans, the Epstein case represents something personal: the belief that the powerful escape consequences ordinary people can't avoid. The bipartisan subpoena suggests that at least some lawmakers sense that frustration won't stay quiet through another election cycle.

Bondi hasn't confirmed when she'll testify. But five Republicans just made clear she won't have a choice.

Epstein files: DOJ releases 'mistakenly withheld' documents naming Trump as Bondi faces bipartisan subpoena

Story by Jim Manzon

CIA working with Kurdish separatists to foment armed rebellion in northwestern Iran

 

THE UNITED STATES CENTRAL Intelligence Agency (CIA) is arming and training ethnic separatists in northwestern Iran with the goal of fomenting an armed rebellion against Tehran in the coming weeks, according to reports. Several news outlets, including CNN, report that Iranian Kurdish opposition forces are preparing to launch a ground operation in northwestern Iran “in the coming days”.

The nearly 10 million Kurds in Iran are one of the largest ethnic minorities in the country, concentrated in the mountainous western provinces bordering Iraq and Turkey. They are predominantly Sunni Muslims in a country governed by a Shia clerical state, creating both religious and ethnic tension. The central government has generally responded to calls for autonomy by various Kurdish factions with security crackdowns and suppression of dissent. Kurdish regions have been subject to heavy surveillance and military deployment, particularly during periods of regional instability.

British news outlet ITV reports that American and Israeli air strikes have consistently targeted Iranian military installations in western Iran in recent days, in an effort to degrade Tehran’s security assets in the region and provide Kurdish rebel forces with the ability to launch a successful armed campaign. According to ITV, Kurdish rebels have asked Israeli and American forces to provide air cover for an eventual ground campaign—though whether this request has been approved remains unknown.

According to Axios, US President Donald Trump spoke directly with Iraqi Kurdish leaders last weekend, seeking access to Iran’s Kurdish provinces through the Kurdish-controlled autonomous region of northern Iraq. Such access would allow the CIA and US Special Operations Forces to create a supply route for the provision of weapons and other war materiel to Iranian Kurdish rebels. The US president also spoke with at least one Iranian Kurdish leader on Tuesday, according to reports.

CNN said it reached out to the CIA about this story but the agency refused to comment on it.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis 

CIA working with Kurdish separatists to foment armed rebellion in northwestern Iran | intelNews.org