We Own the Minab Strike

Your targeting is only as precise as your dataset:

An ongoing military investigation has determined that the United States is responsible for a deadly Tomahawk missile strike on an Iranian elementary school, according to U.S. officials and others familiar with the preliminary findings.

The Feb. 28 strike on the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school building was the result of a targeting mistake by the U.S. military, which was conducting strikes on an adjacent Iranian base of which the school building was formerly a part, the preliminary investigation found. Officers at U.S. Central Command created the target coordinates for the strike using outdated data provided by the Defense Intelligence Agency, people briefed on the investigation said.

Officials emphasized that the findings are preliminary and that there are important unanswered questions about why the outdated information had not been double checked.

Striking a school full of children is sure to be recorded as one of the most devastating single military errors in recent decades. Iranian officials have said the death toll was at least 175 people, most of them children.

For those interested in how LOAC deals with this (under the assumption that it was not the intention to destroy the school), it falls under “Feasible Precautions.”

Applying the concept of feasibility in practice, therefore, the use of specialized unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) by States with modern armed forces does not set a binding precedent for those States without access to comparable resources. This is because the practical possibility of precautionary measures is contingent on a range of factors, including military capabilities and technological resources. Similarly, environmental conditions may limit the feasibility of using capabilities that are otherwise available. Poor visibility, dust storms, and civilian air safety concerns may each restrict the ability of an attacking force to operate UAV. The opponent’s deliberate use of fires and smoke to neutralize the visual and thermal imagery sensors onboard UAV will also impinge upon the feasibility of taking certain precautionary measures when verifying military objectives.

By contrast, the overarching obligation to balance humanitarian and military considerations means that those who plan and decide upon attacks cannot rely on feasibility as a justification to take action inconsistent with what might be expected of a reasonable military commander in the same circumstances. The inability to use UAV does not, therefore, entitle an attacking force to ignore alternative means of obtaining the information necessary to verify military objectives, particularly in cases where some doubt exists; they cannot close their mind to other options that are practically possible, such as the deployment of ground troops to conduct reconnaissance, among others.

I don’t know enough to know exactly what impact Hegseth’s decision to gut the Civilian Harm and Mitigation Response (CHMR) program had on this strike but it’s hard not to wonder if it might have involved a cursory evaluation of the target on Google Maps. Given how easy it would have been to verify that the target was NOT a military installation this does seem to me to be a good candidate for a clear violation of LOAC, which some of you may be familiar with by the term “war crime.”