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That was never a question right?
Trump claimed it was an accident. Then again he seems to be similar to Putin: both lie almost all of the time.

Edit: Actually, others pointed out that at first the narrative was that Iran did it. That's indeed true that the media used that; perhaps one can even build up a timestamp of media reporting falseness here. I forgot which media reported the above lie first.

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> The trump defenders are oddly quiet in this thread.

Why would the winning team convince the losing team they won?

Do you see Anthropic/OpenAI engineers defending against Meta/Google SWEs?

> Do you see Anthropic/OpenAI engineers defending against Meta/Google SWEs

Yes, Dario is constantly whining about China

They’d like us to believe otherwise (the administration)
Colloquially, I think it is well accepted that US launched the missiles. The question is whether they indiscriminately targeted civilians.

NYT did an excellent analysis showing that the US probably did intentionally target the building, believing it to be part of the nearby compound that received several direct strikes. This analysis is really good [1]

The definition of war crime is not "Killed civilians" it is "targeted civilians" or "reckless indiscriminate attacks". My understanding of the NYT analysis is that this was very plausibly misunderstood to still be part of the iran national guard compound.

Everyone gets their own opinion on this. There were 900 or so strikes in the first 12h, and only one school hit, and that school was actually part of the compound before. A horrific accident that was brought on by unnecessary hostilities, i think.

1: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/11/us/politics/iran-school-m...

I'll add the definition from the Rome statute that, by my read, establishes a war crime when there is intent to commit the civilian strikes:

     Unless otherwise provided, a person shall be criminally responsible and liable for punishment for a crime within the jurisdiction of the Court only if the material elements are committed with intent and knowledge.

    A mistake of fact shall be a ground for excluding criminal responsibility only if it negates the mental element required by the crime.
Still this is a legal defense that might plausibly be used during a trial, not necessarily a reason to skip a trial.
From that text, it sure sounds to me that these attacks are going to be legal. The article describes them as 'indescriminate', but they were specifically targetted based on a mistake of fact.

There's certainly evidence that the US was neglegent in relying on old information without verifying. That's serious and reprehensible, but I don't know that that rises to the level of a war crime.

To underscore:

A Iranian military structure was converted into a school.

After conversion, the rest of the naval base remained < 100m away.

Missile strikes hit both the base and the adjacent school.

It's not unusual for schools to be part of military bases. The U.S. itself operates over a 100. [1]

[1] https://www.dodea.edu/

I think the dishonesty is that if the tables were turned, the overwhelming chorus would be

"Why the fuck would you convert former soldier barracks, still located on an active base, to a kids school? How fucking dumb are you?"

11 years ago. If we're operating on decade+ old info, that's pretty damning.

Is there a "reckless endangerment" or "manslaughter" equivalent in the war-crimes sphere?

Is it me or is it reckless to leave a school in part of an old military complex ? That seems negligent to me, for this exact reason.

Maybe it was intentional too ?

Hegseth's military had woefully outdated intelligence. And because he's a news host and NOT a war chief, he ended up ordering the destruction of a school full of girls so they could distract the news from the epstein files.
Your claim is that hegseth directed the US Navy to launch an attack on a building it knew to be a school full of kids for the negative headlines, because those negative headlines would distract from the Epstein files outrage?
No no no, they didn't know that it was a school because they're incompetent, but ALSO knew it was as school because they're evil.
You seem to be confusing everyone's stances (incompetence vs malice). Some people in this thread believe it was incompetence and therefore not a war crime, and others believe it was malicious and therefore a war crime. I personally don't think stupidity is a good legal defense but what do I know.
US army used to have unit responsible to unsure this dont happen. Guess who dismantled it due to being too woke and not lethal enough.
The double tap to me is really what is cruel. I understand americans don't want to hear it, because they need to believe their military is moral, but a double tap to me show cruelty and willingness to target doctor, nurses, firemen and any person courageous enough to help.

The US military and its sailors already showed me everything i wont to know about them when i saw the report on them shooting torpedoes at capsized boats. Like i said before, if any US person is on a boat and need help, i will still do it, because anybody not helping on the sea is an inhuman piece of shit, but i will keep my distance.

I mean, for the general public it was pretty clear the US was very likely to be at fault here. But for a UN report you generally expect a way higher level of evidence and standard for the analysis (in practice it’s not always the case though, some UN reports are sometimes fairly shallow, always good to skim through them and not rely only on the reporting if you want the nuanced story)
> failed to adequately verify the information before launching the strike

I'm so proud to be an American today :-(

You can also be proud that your country is about to send another 40-60 thousand 1 ton bombs for free to a country that used the previous lesser sized free batch to kill 20 thousnad children in the most horrific ways imaginable.

I guess it was judged a success so more was deemed appropriate.

Then do something about it - inform yourself about the other days.

The USA has been dropping bombs on innocent people on average for the past 25 years every 15 minutes.

The only force capable of reining in the US’ out of control military industrial complex, is the American people themselves. Until they do, the atrocities continue unabated.

Better late than never to look past the propaganda, I guess.
For some context the school shared walls with and used to be part of an active military base. [1]

That being said bombing children is always a tragedy and the US should be doing everything it can to learn from this and not make these kinds of mistakes.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Minab_school_attack

Are these the same lessons they should have learned from bombing Afghan weddings or Iraqi funerals?
Were you complaining when Obama killed US citizens and kids with drone strikes? Or does the outrage have conditions?
> Were you complaining when Obama killed US citizens and kids with drone strikes?

Your attempt to try to spin the morality of bombing innocent civilians as a mere domestic partisan issue is disconcerting. I mean, this site has a diverse international readership, and a UN report on potential war crimes is hardly a domestic issue.

I am very sorry this is happening to your country. I hope you manage to fix it.
You should feel angry, and you should be channeling that anger into constructive action.

For now, this means voting Democrat and supporting Democrats for office.

Donald Trump has turned the Republican party into a cult of personality to support a kleptocracy. The GOP is no longer the party of conservative values. The rule of law, respect for traditional mores or institutions, and personal integrity have all been defenestrated by the Trump administration.

Are the Democrats perfect? Of course not. But under the current system, the United States has a zero-sum two party system, and this means voting for one of the two parties. Making room for third parties means adjusting the rules (eg. ranked choice voting, or other). These ideas are worth pursuing. As long as we're stuck in a two party system, this means voting for the lesser of two evils.

Nihilists will scoff at this and point to everything wrong that happened under Obama or Biden. They'll says Democrats are no better than Republicans. They're wrong. At best, they're misguided. At worst, they're actually trying to bring an end to democratic government (that's a lower-case "d" for democracy).

The Democrats are imperfect. The Republican party under the current leadership are far, far worse. It's not even close.

Get out and vote.

"Hey Claude, where should I bomb Iran? Make no mistakes."
let me guess, the end result of this will be "strong condemnation"?
While vacationing in Colorado I was approached by a young man and woman who wanted to tell me about Christianity, towards the end I told them that I do no view Christians in America as good people as group, and gave them various reasons why, the support of Trump being a main reason. Supporting someone so overtly evil while pretending to be righteous and godly was clearly contradictory to me, the whole situation caused me to view religious people not as misinformed but actively disingenuous (those smart enough to know better anyway). He snapped back with "OBAMA BOMBED A SCHOOL"

Which, at the time I thought, yes its bad that US presidents almost all are willing to do war when it isn't a good idea, but Obama isn't the president right now and I think you can expect Trump to bomb some schools too man.

and here we are.

As an side, fuck every single person here that supported or made excuses for the GOP in the last two decades, I will never forgive you.

the classic gotcha that doesn't work on outsiders that don't care about the partisan devide. All US presidents going back for quite a while are war criminals.
Christians aren't bad people. Its just that the older ones (and a few young ones) get their information from terrible sources. They watch Fox News, where every day Trump is presented as the hero fighting against the evil democrats. They don't notice the propaganda like a fish doesn't notice water. Bad inputs bad outputs.
Christians aren't bad people, but it's undeniable that the one demographic that supports Trump more than any other are Christians. Trump is the face, heart and soul of American Christianity. Where else are Christians arguing that genocide on behalf of Israel is a moral imperative, or that empathy is a sin?

If so many Christians were so easily swayed by hateful propaganda then that's still a fault and failure of the religion, as is the utter failure of the "good" Christians to do anything about it. People aren't machines that blindly process inputs into outputs, at least not in any useful sense that takes morality and ethics into account. People have agency, they're responsible for their own decisions. And these people have a Bible probably at arms reach at all times and they know what it says.

>"Christians aren't bad people, but it's undeniable that the one demographic that supports Trump more than any other are Christians."

I think it's more so that "Christian" is just the default cultural identity and worldview of native born Americans who have zero self awareness or thoughtfulness. Almost none of them actually believe anything really when you start to ask questions. It's just the in-group that they latch on to because they've never had an independent thought in their lives.

> "Christian" is just the default cultural identity and worldview of native born Americans who have zero self awareness

You people are excellent for irony.

Can you please not post in the flamewar style to HN, no matter how right you are or feel you are? we're trying for something different here. We've had to ask you this before (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35718735), and you've been breaking the site guidelines repeatedly lately (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49355271 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49154963, in addition to here).

If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.

ECHR, UN and ECJ will find any and everything as crime against humanity so it is best to ignore them and make your own judgement. It is like asking ADL if something is antisemitism or SPLC if something is racism - the answer will always be yes, so why bother.
Oh ok, so then how do you qualify this event? As whoopsie? A misclick?
Okay. My own judgement is targeting strikes on an elementary school full of hundreds of school children is a war crime.

Do you not want to see accountability for that? Are you not pro-life?

Of course I want to see accountability. Two valuable and expensive ammunitions were wasted due to sloppy intelligence work. Also there should be punishment for the civilian deaths I guess. But unless the school was deliberately targeted because it was a school, double taping on military barracks that are attached to a military base shouldn't be looked as a war crime. USG is under no obligation to have up to date information.

>Following the United States and Israeli attacks on 28 February, the mission found reasonable grounds to believe the United States committed the war crime of launching indiscriminate attacks resulting in the loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects.

The attacks were obviously not indiscriminate. Indiscriminate is covering an area with napalm and throwing a match.

It was clearly a school and deliberately targeted.

You caring more about munitions than the lives of innocent children says a lot about who you are.

> ECHR, UN and ECJ will find any and everything as crime against humanity

That doesn't make them automatically wrong. This is clearly a crime against humanity.

> It is like asking ADL if something is antisemitism

There is a huge difference between hating Jews and condemning the actions of the Israeli government in occupied Palestine and the support it has from other countries.

GPS spies on everyone. Flock cameras too. Meta-spy glasses continue that trend.

Now officials tell the public "we used old maps" when bombing a school with kids. That's a deliberate lie. It wastes our time to even want to lend any credibility to wanting to believe such a lie.

> GPS spies on everyone.

That's... not how GPS works.

I think what the commenter meant is that by using the GPS in mobile devices, these devices and their apps report their locations to various other places, including data collectors, which is probably how the US determined there was an Iranian commander at or near the school.
> GPS spies on everyone.

Point of clarification - GPS/GNSS does not work that way. The GPS in your phone only _listens_ to GPS signals and is not transmitting to/observable by the satellite. https://ciechanow.ski/gps/

Whenever I read the US or Israel wanting to free Iran from it's "horrible regime", remember this incident plus the hospitals targeted during their attack.
And remember how Iran slaughtered tens of thousands of its own citizens a few weeks prior. And the continual killing of Iranian citizens having differing political options of the regime.

War is never pretty or perfect. Winning a war comes with great cost

The purpose of starting a war is to extract concessions from the other side that you were unable to get through diplomacy, not to kill a lot of people because you think they deserve it. So far Iran has not been willing to make any concessions that it wasn't willing to make before the start of the war, and has shown that it can disrupt Gulf oil exports.
Iran was attack as it was making concessions.
> And remember how Iran slaughtered tens of thousands of its own citizens a few weeks prior.

Yes? How is that a reason to kill even more Iranians, especially schoolgirls?

> Winning a war comes with great cost

Invading a country and wanting to steal their resources at any cost, a cost as large as needed, is a crime against humanity.

The USA is not defending itself, it is just trying to control Irans oil to increase the power of American economic elites. Billionaires want more power, children, women and men die indiscriminately because of that.

And, you are totally right. Billionaires does not care that winning a war comes with great cost, because the cost is for USA service men and for all Iranians.

You talk about it as if America cared one bit about those citizens. This war just made the regime stronger.

If America succeeded, it would change the head, steal oil and keep the regime there to keep control on locals. Like in Venezuela. Maybe committing few atrocities on top of it.

But also of course, it would then invade Cuba and Greenland and god knows who.

Killing civilians and destroying infrastructure in the name of saving oppressed people; it's quite impressive such low-effort imperialist propaganda still works after Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya.
Yes nothing says we care about you and your citizens then destroying a little girls school. Really helps enforce the message of love and peace.
Eh, as much as I might dislike the government of my country, I think I believe I would hate a lot more the country that decided it was a good idea to blow schoolgirls from my country into minced meat.
I hope it was not deliberate but it may have been. Blowing up the kids of military generals is a strategic move when you ignore the "rules of war".
Wasn't it right next to a military base, and previously used as part of that military base? And therefore a reasonable part of the targeting list that should've gotten more scrutiny but just didn't?

This feels like someone wanted to slander the US military actions, could only find one unambiguously negative thing, so then they pontificated on that.

I don’t understand your attitude. The slaughter of hundreds of children seems genuinely inherently upsetting and unacceptable to me. I don’t see why an element of negligence would make this something to just “not pontificate on” in a court of law or in public discourse.
I was in support of the airstrikes in Iran. The Iranian government was gunning down civilians in the streets, in some cases guiding protestors into killzones where they were all slaughtered, leaving the streets saturated in blood. Innocent peoples bodies were then ransomed off to "pay for the bullet that shot them". Some of the people in body bags weren't even dead, just stuffed into a bag and assumed dead, because emergency care would be antithetical to their goals.

Iran decided that their own domestic repressive force was insufficient and perhaps too empathetic, so they brought in foreigners (Iraqi Shias AFAICT) to repressive the people on their behalf.

THAT was what had truly upset me - people who wanted a freer better life being brutalized for daring to stand up to authorities. As you put it, it was genuinely intently upsetting and unacceptable to me.

I don't mean to demean the death of innocents at the US military's hands. But painting the whole effort as an evil atrocity (what I believe the point of the article), belies the atrocities that triggered the effort.

Honestly the fact that the world has moved on so quickly from the struggle of the Italian people sickens me. Here we are moralizing about ourselves because it fits a preferred narrative (US bad), when the people really suffering are swept under a carpet because they're inconvenient. Disgusting.

Come on, this is really laying it on thick! I'd like to see some pretty strong evidence of that almost comically over-the-top list you open with.
How exactly does an atrocity "trigger" a bombing of a school? Do you feel entitled to some atrocity credits when your opponent commits an atrocity? Fill in the gaps for me.

I feel like you are missing some steps there.

You're implying it was intentional, when it clearly was not.

My annoyance was the focus on something that aligns with a narrative some people love to push (US bad), and ignoring the bigger issues that actually plague the Iranian people that just get ignored because no one actually cares.

> This feels like someone wanted to slander the US military actions, could only find one unambiguously negative thing, so then they pontificated on that.

If a soldier on the ground had called in the airstrike, there is a good chance they would be in military prison.

The fact that the administration itself did it means nothing will happen.

Always know what you're shooting at, especially if it changed purposes over a decade ago.

> If a soldier on the ground had called in the airstrike, there is a good chance they would be in military prison.

No, they wouldn't and neither would they in any other military; most militaries don't punish most war crimes let alone what looks like negligence.

Yes because normal people have tomahawks they can shoot to schools in their basements, and it required a court to find out who was responsible: United States, Dr. Evil, or the Cookie Monster?
So... what's gonna be done about it? The recent precedent has been to invade the country, grab the president and try them.
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nobody cares
Propaganda machine running on overdrive on this one. Quick quick make some extra accounts to post doubt. Pathetic.
> Propaganda machine running on overdrive on this one. Quick quick make some extra accounts to post doubt. Pathetic.

This is what people actually care about:

- Did my Claude agent finish from last night?

- I need to pay rent this weekend.

- Do I need to pick up the kids today?

Nobody gives a shit about Iran, or the US, for that matter.

The sooner you accept this, the happier you will be.

Demonstrably false from this thread alone.

How can you meaningfully participate in a democracy when the world is so globalised without at least a basic understanding of international affairs?

We all know this happened. What I find hilarious in the discussion here is that everyone also knows it was caused by AI replacing humans on the battlefield, but because so many here have deeply conflicted interests they pretend they don’t know and act as though some human somewhere did this intentionally. Greed really corrupts the dialog around military use of AI.
> so many here have deeply conflicted interests

What do you mean by this? I use AI both personally and for work but I'm not conflicted at all about its use for things we generally agree are harmful.

Seeing as it was a "double tap" it was clearly a deliberate target. Bomb the school, wait until officers from the nearby base with kids at the school arrive to try and rescue their daughters and hit it again. Clearly a war crime, possibly using Israeli targeting information, which clouds which State is ultimately responsible.
The article doesn't state that it was a double tap. This is the first I'm hearing.
Highly unlikely an entire chain of military personnel knew it was a school and was like, "yeah get em good, and lets see when they come scrambling in for their kids corpses".

Do you hear yourself? Have you ever in your life met someone this sadistic? It was definitely a mistake. One might argue criminal negligence, but there is no way everyone in the loop here is just pure evil. That just isn't how people think in North America. It is unfathomable that a team of US military (people with families of their own no doubt), would all nod along and agree with your contention.

> Have you ever in your life met someone this sadistic?

All the time, on the internet. People will reveal the most deranged opinions when they feel immune from consequences for them.

> Have you ever in your life met someone this sadistic?

Not met anyone personally like that. But I have made sure that I kept good company.

However, there was precedence in the form of Nazi Germany.

Can we be sure without evidence that this administration did not do it knowingly, given how they have been behaving thus far?

> Do you hear yourself? Have you ever in your life met someone this sadistic?

This isn't necessarily driven by sadism. A sociopath following an amoral (immoral) decision process where they draft a plan to decapitate military leadership by trying to attract them to a place to then kill them would fit the description.

And from a moral point of view, is it justifiable to kill military personnel in a military engagement that's not even framed as a war?

pattern is there: first hit a public place (market, ...), then when people are scrambling to help, hit them again. "double-tap". Seen in Gaza, Ukraine, Syria, Yemen, ... It's quite cynical, the topic has its own Wikipedia page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-tap_strike

Where does the article you linked say "Public Place"?

You just linked to a standard military tactic

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Something can be obviously evil, while also being a standard military tactic.
The accusation is not "let's kill some kids", the accusation was "the target is in a school, bomb it anyway to get the target". Much of these targeted assassinations in the early stage of this campaign consisted of blowing up entire city blocks where a target was believed to be. They actually believed they would get pro-Israel people in the government if they killed the current crop.
> Highly unlikely an entire chain of military personnel knew it was a school and was like, "yeah get em good, and lets see when they come scrambling in for their kids corpses".

When you phrase it like that, I firmly believe that's exactly what happened.

The current president of the USA said he would end the entire Iranian civilization. What do you think that entails?
> Have you ever in your life met someone this sadistic?

Yes, I have. In the US. Some were active military personnel at the time.

Some folks are just warped, but some folks change a lot after they have experienced war.

Which america you're talking about? It's pretty normal and expected behaviour from USA.
I'd love to live in your fantasy world.
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I wouldn’t say sadistic, but the military command is very desensitized to death. When all you do is basically kill people, then killing more is like pouring a cup of coffee. It’s just part of your day.

Remember that, prior to this, the US military had been conducting many suspicious strikes on boats in the gulf. It’s not like this came out of nowhere. The culture of negligence and lack of care was well-established.

The way such things can actually happen is, when the executing side is of the opinion, that the targeted side are lesser beings.
Nothing in the UN report claims that this was an intentional strike on civilians. They make NO claim to that effect.

The claim is that "the U.S. failed in its obligation to do everything feasible to verify that it was a military objective. Updating targeting information and acting upon such information falls within the category of feasible precautions an attacking party is required to take under IHL . . . the strikes are a violation of the obligation to distinguish between civilian objects.

And:

" the Mission concluded that when targeting the school building, the U.S acted wilfully, that is with the requisite mental element of recklessness ( dolus eventualis)."

And (finally):

". . . the Mission found that these strikes constituted an indiscriminate attack in violation of the principle of distinction."

The UN report's claim is that the US negligently used outdated information which led them to think this compound hit was still a military target.

It's evident you didn't read the report and submitted a shitpost.

The comment you're replying to doesn't even mention the UN, it's about double-tap strikes.

> It's evident you didn't read the report and submitted a shitpost.

Chill.

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I'm gonna guess they will blame AI and say we need more AI safety, bonus if they claim it was an open weight model.
One great thing about the Internet is it lets you see how other people live, if you want to go looking for it. Think about all the things you want in your life: a house to live in, a car to drive, children (maybe), your children being able to get an education safely, good health, time with family and friends and so on.

The point is that Iranian families want all of those things too. Because they're people just like you are. You can see videos of ordinary Iranians going to the market, going to work, having family over, eating a meal together and so on. It saddens and frightens me how easy it seems to dehumanize other people and basically be OK with killing them en masse.

Now I want you to think about what you'd do if you sent your 11 year old daughter to school one day and some foreign government double tapped that school with 2 Tomahawk missiles killing almost 200 people, most of them children.

We kind of do know because it's basically what happened after 9/11. We spent $8T+ on a 20 year war to kill over a million people in vengeance that really didn't do anything else. Remember that Afghanistan offered to hand bin Laden over after 9/11 [1].

The Trump administration tried (badly) lying about what happened. First it never happened. Second, it wasn't us. But nobody else has Tomahawk missiles so that was never going to work.

The only question is where the targeting information came from and what verification was done. I am not convinced that Israel didn't supply this information so the US military would commit atrocities to keep them in a war that Israel had desperately wanted for decades. Every president since Reagan had been begged by Israeli PMs to invade Iran. All of them refused. It's widely believed that Netanyahu threatened to use nukes if Obama wouldn't do it. Obama called his bluff. Until Trump. And here we are.

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/14/afghanistan.te...

Don’t put schools near military targets. I think it’s common sense if you value children life.
Doesn’t it concern some of you how strongly and confidently you “know” some things that you have no concept of other than what your screen has showed you?

The number of posts of absolute certainty is sort of fucked up.