The images that emerged from the southern Iranian port city of Minab stunned even veteran military analysts accustomed to the brutal calculus of modern warfare. A collapsed elementary school lay buried beneath shattered concrete, twisted metal and fragments of children’s desks. Blood-stained backpacks and scattered textbooks poked through the debris. Parents knelt in the dust, clutching the bodies of their children.
According to Iranian health authorities, the February 28 missile strike killed more than 165 people, most of them children under the age of 12, and wounded nearly 100 others. Rows of small coffins and freshly dug graves quickly circulated across social media, turning the schoolyard tragedy into a haunting symbol of the first day of what is rapidly becoming an open-ended U.S.–Israeli war in Iran.
For former U.S. Air Force combat targeting specialist Wes J. Bryant, the horror in Minab triggered painful questions about decisions made inside Washington over the past year. Bryant had spent much of his career studying civilian casualty cases, but he said the images from the devastated school were worse than anything he had examined during his work inside the Pentagon.
“I couldn’t stop thinking about the what-ifs,” Bryant said in an interview. “This is exactly the kind of scenario we were trying to prevent.”
Just months earlier, Bryant had served as a senior adviser in a Defense Department initiative designed to overhaul how the U.S. military protects civilians during combat operations. The program, known as Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response, represented the most comprehensive attempt in decades to integrate civilian safety into U.S. military planning.
But that effort has now largely disappeared.
Bryant was forced out during government cuts last spring. The Pentagon unit he worked for was dismantled as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shifted the military’s strategic focus toward what he calls “maximum lethality.” Analysts say the policy shift has dramatically loosened oversight of U.S. strikes across several global theaters.
If Washington is ultimately confirmed as responsible for the Minab strike — a possibility suggested by multiple open-source investigations — the incident could mark the deadliest single attack on civilians by the U.S. military in decades.
The Minab strike occurred during the opening phase of a rapidly escalating conflict involving the United States, Israel and Iran. Washington has framed its campaign as a preventive operation aimed at weakening Iran’s military infrastructure and regional proxy networks. Tehran has responded by targeting U.S. bases and allied installations across the Middle East.
The broader war is already reshaping global geopolitics. Oil prices have surged, shipping routes through the Persian Gulf have been disrupted, and analysts warn the conflict could spill into neighboring regions including Iraq, Syria and the Red Sea.
But it is the civilian toll that has drawn the sharpest criticism.
Human rights monitors estimate that more than 1,200 Iranian civilians have been killed since the bombing campaign began, including nearly 200 children. Hundreds of additional deaths remain under investigation, complicated by internet shutdowns inside Iran and the difficulty of verifying casualties in an active war zone.
“The humanitarian consequences are mounting quickly,” said conflict researcher Alexander Palmer of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “This campaign appears to be driven primarily by the goal of eliminating targets rather than managing civilian risk.”
While Washington has not confirmed responsibility for the Minab strike, multiple pieces of evidence suggest the attack was carried out by U.S. forces.
President Donald Trump initially denied the allegation, telling reporters on March 7 that the strike was “done by Iran.” Standing beside him aboard Air Force One, Defense Secretary Hegseth said the incident was under investigation.
However, independent analysts soon uncovered evidence pointing in a different direction.
The investigative research group Bellingcat authenticated a video showing a cruise missile striking near the school compound. The weapon’s flight characteristics matched those of a Tomahawk missile — a long-range cruise missile used primarily by the U.S. Navy.
Iranian state media later displayed fragments recovered at the scene that investigators also identified as parts of a Tomahawk missile.
The United States is the only combatant in the current conflict known to possess Tomahawk cruise missiles.
United Nations human rights experts have called for an independent investigation to determine whether the strike violated international humanitarian law. Neither the Pentagon nor the White House has responded publicly to requests for comment.
For Bryant and other former Pentagon officials, the Minab disaster highlights the consequences of dismantling a program designed specifically to prevent such tragedies.
The Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response initiative — often shortened to CHMR — was launched in 2022 following years of criticism over civilian deaths during U.S. air campaigns in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.
The initiative aimed to integrate civilian protection into every phase of military operations. Its strategy required commanders to conduct detailed analyses of civilian presence in potential strike zones, update “no-strike lists” containing protected sites like schools and hospitals, and review every incident where noncombatants might have been harmed.
At its peak, the program employed about 200 personnel across the Defense Department. Roughly 30 specialists worked inside a newly established Civilian Protection Center of Excellence near the Pentagon.
Bryant said the center functioned as a coordination hub connecting analysts, intelligence officers and combat commanders across multiple theaters.
“The goal was simple,” he said. “Before a missile is launched, you want to know exactly who might be standing nearby.”
When reports of civilian casualties emerged after a strike, CHMR teams were tasked with investigating the incident, determining what went wrong and incorporating lessons into future training.
Advocates said the system represented a cultural shift inside the U.S. military.
“For the first time there was a structured process to learn from mistakes,” said a former CHMR adviser who joined the program in 2024.
That effort began unraveling soon after Trump returned to office and appointed Hegseth as defense secretary.
Hegseth, a former television commentator and Army National Guard infantry officer, has long argued that strict rules of engagement and legal oversight weaken the effectiveness of American forces.
In speeches and interviews, he has frequently criticized what he describes as excessive concern about civilian casualties.
“War is about defeating enemies,” he said during a defense conference last year. “The warrior ethos must come first.”
Soon after taking office, Hegseth fired the military’s top judge advocate generals — senior legal advisers responsible for ensuring operations comply with U.S. and international law.
He also ordered sweeping reductions across several Pentagon programs, including CHMR.
Former officials say roughly 90 percent of the program’s staff positions were eliminated within months. Regional combat commands that once had dedicated civilian protection teams were left with a single adviser — or none at all.
The Civilian Protection Center of Excellence technically still exists, but Bryant says it now operates largely in name only.
“It has no mission, no mandate and no budget,” he said.
At the same time the oversight program was shrinking, the tempo of U.S. military operations expanded dramatically.
Global conflict monitors report that the number of U.S. airstrikes conducted since Trump returned to office already exceeds the total recorded during the entire four-year presidency of Joe Biden.
Several of those operations have resulted in significant civilian casualties.
In April, a U.S. airstrike hit a migrant detention center in northwestern Yemen, killing at least 61 African migrants and injuring dozens more. Amnesty International said the attack may qualify as a war crime.
In Somalia, where the United States is targeting militants from the Islamist group Al-Shabaab, the number of strikes increased nearly sixfold over the past year.
According to the New America Foundation, at least 125 strikes were carried out in Somalia during the first year of Trump’s second term, resulting in as many as 359 deaths.
Local communities say some of those killed were not militants.
In one incident last September, villagers in northeastern Somalia said a missile strike killed Omar Abdullahi, a respected clan elder known locally as “Omar Peacemaker.”
“He was a man who mediated disputes and prevented violence,” his brother Ali Abdullahi told Somali media. “Now his blood stains our soil.”
The U.S. military has not released detailed information about the strike.
The debate over civilian casualties has long haunted U.S. military campaigns.
One of the most infamous incidents occurred in 2015, when an American AC-130 gunship mistakenly attacked a hospital run by the humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders in the Afghan city of Kunduz.
The assault lasted more than an hour, killing 24 patients and medical workers and destroying the trauma center.
“Our patients burned in their beds,” the organization said in a report. “Others were shot as they fled the building.”
A U.S. investigation later concluded that a combination of human error and equipment failures caused the gunship crew to misidentify the hospital as a Taliban compound.
The Obama administration issued an apology and offered compensation to victims’ families.
The tragedy sparked renewed efforts within the Pentagon to improve civilian protection, though many analysts say those reforms were implemented slowly.
High civilian casualty events continued during the campaign against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria.
In March 2017 alone, U.S. operations were linked to three separate mass-casualty incidents: a drone strike on a mosque in Syria that killed about 50 people; a strike on a school sheltering displaced families that killed around 40; and a bombing in Mosul that caused a building collapse killing more than 100 civilians.
Military leaders have long understood that civilian deaths can undermine strategic objectives.
Retired General Stanley McChrystal, who commanded U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, famously described the phenomenon as “insurgent math.”
For every innocent person killed in a military operation, McChrystal argued, as many as ten new enemies may be created.
Beyond moral concerns, civilian casualties can strengthen militant recruitment, erode trust with local communities and complicate intelligence gathering.
“It’s not just about ethics,” Bryant said. “It’s about strategy.”
Critics warn that the dismantling of civilian protection programs risks repeating mistakes made during the early years of the war on terror.
“It’s Groundhog Day,” said a former senior counterterrorism official who recently left government service. “We’re repeating the same cycle — killing people today and creating tomorrow’s enemies.”
Former CHMR personnel say the Minab strike illustrates precisely how the civilian protection system was supposed to work.
Under the program’s procedures, preparations for a potential Iran conflict would have begun months before the first missile was fired.
Analysts would have compiled a detailed map of the “civilian environment,” identifying schools, hospitals, markets and other locations where noncombatants might be present.
Those sites would have been added to a constantly updated “no-strike list” distributed to operational planners.
The elementary school in Minab sits just a few hundred meters from a base used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The building was once part of the military compound but has appeared on civilian maps as a school since at least 2013.
One key question investigators are now asking is whether the school was included on the no-strike list used by U.S. forces.
“If that information had been flagged properly, the strike probably would never have happened,” the former CHMR adviser said.
Even if the attack proceeded due to faulty intelligence, CHMR procedures required an immediate review and transparent public explanation.
Instead, Bryant says, the official response has been evasive.
“The silence has been shameful,” he said.
Human rights organizations are now urging the United Nations to launch a formal investigation into the Minab strike.
Legal experts say targeting errors that result in civilian deaths can constitute violations of international humanitarian law if commanders failed to take reasonable precautions.
The case is likely to intensify global debate over the conduct of the U.S.–Israeli campaign in Iran.
Diplomats in Europe and Asia are increasingly concerned that the conflict could escalate into a broader regional war, while humanitarian groups warn that civilian casualties may continue to rise.
For Bryant, the tragedy in Minab represents more than a single failed operation.
“It shows what happens when you dismantle safeguards,” he said. “You remove the systems that force people to ask hard questions before they pull the trigger.”
He fears the attack may become a defining example of how quickly hard-won reforms can vanish.
“If the evidence confirms what it looks like right now,” Bryant said, “this will go down as one of the most serious failures in civilian protection in modern U.S. military history.”
And for the families burying their children in Minab, those policy debates offer little comfort.
