Minab

Minab is a mid-sized agricultural city of roughly 100,000 people in Hormozgan Province, southern Iran, situated on the Minab River approximately 100 kilometres northeast of Bandar Abbas, Iran's principal commercial port. Known regionally for date PALM cultivation, its Thursday market, and traditional boat-building, the city had no meaningful military significance before 2026.

On Day 1 of the US-Israeli operation (28 February 2026), a strike destroyed the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls' elementary school in Minab, killing between 148 and 180 people, predominantly girls aged 7 to 12. A mass funeral brought 165 coffins through the city streets, broadcast live by IRIB. Three independent newsroom investigations traced the weapon to a US Tomahawk cruise missile operating on outdated targeting data. A preliminary US military investigation later reached the same conclusion: outdated intelligence pointed the strike at a nearby naval facility instead of the school; no findings have been made public and no accountability measures have followed. Only 58 victims were formally identified after 18 days. Congressional pressure escalated from 46 senators to 120-plus House members demanding inquiry into whether AI targeting tools selected the school.

The Minab strike remained an unresolved accountability void until 14 May 2026, when Iran named the presidential aircraft carrying Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi to the BRICS summit in New Delhi as "Minab168", invoking the casualty count as a state-symbolic act in a multilateral diplomatic setting. This is the first time the Iranian state has deployed the Minab casualty count as a diplomatic instrument rather than a domestic memorial. The naming converts a civilian atrocity into a portable grievance that Iran can carry into any international forum: the aircraft designation ensures that every photograph of the BRICS landing carries the number of dead schoolgirls into the frame.