AILSA CHANG, HOST:
On the first day of the U.S. and Israel's bombardment of Iran, a missile slammed into a building, and Iran's media says that building was a school for girls. At least a hundred sixty-five people are reported dead, mostly children. Earlier this week, President Trump suggested that Iran was to blame, but now NPR has confirmed that the Pentagon launched a formal investigation that suggests the U.S. did fire that missile. NPR's Quil Lawrence is here now to explain. Hi, Quil.
QUIL LAWRENCE, BYLINE: Hey, Ailsa.
CHANG: OK. So at this point, what do we think happened in this strike?
LAWRENCE: So NPR was the first to report that the blast at the school was part of a precision strike and likely the result of outdated intelligence. Our colleague Geoff Brumfiel reported that on a map of targets in Iran - a previous map - it showed that this girls' school was once part of what had been an Iranian Revolutionary Guard naval base in the city of Minab, but then the school was walled off from the base sometime between 2013 and 2016, according to historical satellite imagery reviewed by NPR. A public health clinic on what used to be the base was also hit, and satellite images show that that clinic was walled off from the base around 2024 and opened in 2025. Iranian Revolutionary Guard Commander in Chief Hossein Salami was in the local media cutting the ribbon for that clinic's opening. He was assassinated by Israel later that year.
CHANG: And I understand that there are videos showing what looks to be a Tomahawk missile, specifically, right? - hitting this compound. What does that tell us?
LAWRENCE: Yeah. President Trump was suggesting earlier this week that anyone could fire a Tomahawk and that Iran had perhaps killed its own civilians. But in this war right now, the U.S. is the only actor that has Tomahawks. And what we've learned now is that the Pentagon may be tacitly acknowledging that it did carry out this strike because according to one U.S. official and another individual with knowledge, who are not authorized to speak publicly, the Pentagon has opened what's called a 15-6 investigation, which is to determine not if this happened, but how this mistake happened and also confirm that it was indeed civilians that were killed in the strike. If it was, this would be the worst U.S.-inflicted civilian death toll going back 35 years.
CHANG: Wow. Well, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has talked about freeing troops from restrictive rules of engagement. Do you think that that plays any role here?
LAWRENCE: Well, there's - we should say that there have been major civilian casualties inflicted under President Biden, President Obama, President Bush, President Clinton and the first President Bush. So over the 12 years that I covered Iraq and Afghanistan, I would sometimes make it to the scene after one of these strikes and see that the U.S. had used a precision strike to try to avoid civilian casualties. They'd hit exactly what they aimed for, but they had bad intelligence, so they aimed at the wrong target. In all those years, there's sort of an effort built inside and outside the military to avoid killing innocent people, and Congress mandated a Pentagon office that was stood up in 2023 to reduce civilian harm. But when Hegseth took office, he shrunk it down to a nub, and he also fired a lot of military lawyers. So - and a U.S. official told NPR that Hegseth's decision to scale back those efforts meant that U.S. Central Command had only one staffer assigned to civilian casualty mitigation.
CHANG: And I just want to make it clear, we cannot say that that's a direct cause of this apparent tragedy, right?
LAWRENCE: Correct. These strikes always happen when the U.S. goes to war. Civilians are always the worst affected in every war in modern history. It is part of the cost if you choose to go to war.
CHANG: That's right. That is NPR's Quil Lawrence. Thank you, Quil.
LAWRENCE: Thank you.
CHANG: And we will note that NPR reached out to the White House and Pentagon for comment. We received an email from White House spokesperson Anna Kelly saying, quote, "this investigation is ongoing. As we have said, unlike the terrorist Iranian regime, the United States does not target civilians." Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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