Iranian Health Ministry public relations head Hossein Kermanpour stated overnight that the strike on the Shajareh Tayyebeh school in Minab killed approximately 180 young children. The victims are girls aged 7 to 12. The figure has climbed steadily — from 148 when the Iranian Red Crescent first reported it, to 165 as rescue teams worked through rubble, to 180 now — a pattern consistent with recovery operations in a collapsed structure rather than political inflation. Iran's communications blackout has made real-time verification impossible; figures have emerged only as connectivity returns incrementally.
No independent forensic investigation has been conducted or permitted. This remains the central fact, unchanged since the first reports. Iran blames US and Israeli forces. Independent reporting by The New York Times, CNN, and Time points to a US Tomahawk cruise missile using outdated targeting data as the likely cause, though no official attribution has been made. Neither Washington nor Jerusalem has claimed the strike.
The question of what happened at Minab is answerable. Tomahawk fragments are identifiable by serial number, and the US military maintains strike logs that could confirm or rule out the weapon's origin. The 1991 Amiriyah shelter strike in Baghdad, which killed over 400 civilians, was eventually acknowledged by the US as a targeting failure — the shelter had been misidentified as a command-and-control facility. The 2015 US strike on the Médecins Sans Frontières hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, which killed 42 people, led to disciplinary action after an internal investigation found procedural failures. In both cases, facts eventually emerged. At Minab, 72 hours have passed with no process initiated by any party.
The E3 statement issued Monday — condemning Iranian attacks on Gulf states but silent on US-Israeli strikes — means the European governments closest to Washington have chosen not to demand an investigation. Spain broke from this position. For the families of 180 dead girls, the governments capable of compelling an answer have decided not to ask the question.
