Last Saturday morning, a girl’s elementary school was destroyed during the US/Israeli bombardment of Iran. 175 people died horribly, the vast majority of them little girls between the ages of seven and twelve.
At first, this went under-reported in Western media, but nightmarish videos and images across social media made it impossible to ignore. Then the lies began flying almost as quickly as the missiles.
The MAGA take was that, actually, the Iranians had bombed their own school. This was an outright lie, as proven by their instantly debunked “evidence” being a photo taken 800 miles from the school and a fabricated screenshot of the Iranian state accepting responsibility.
US military investigators believe it is likely that US forces were responsible for an apparent strike on an Iranian girls' school that killed scores of children on February 28 but have not yet reached a final conclusion or completed their investigation https://t.co/7PkajtDYp4
— Reuters (@Reuters) March 6, 2026
A U.S. military investigation has been underway ever since, and they’ve now announced that “it is likely” that the U.S. bombed the school. They underline that this isn’t their final conclusion and isn’t the end of the investigation. But, let’s face it, they wouldn’t make this announcement unless they’re pretty sure they know what happened.
“We, of course, never target civilian targets”
So, will anyone face any consequences for what is unambiguously a horrifying war crime and one of the worst civilian massacres in the history of the Middle East? Well, Pete Hegseth was quizzed on it and indicated this must have just been one of those crazy things that happen sometimes, insisting “We, of course, never target civilian targets”. Of course.
Nobody should get their hopes up that anyone is going to be in serious trouble for killing a literal schoolful of children, and I predict the investigation will blame a combination of failure of intelligence, equipment malfunction, and the fog of war without pinning down any individual.
But beyond that, this incident has been very telling. The mad rush from MAGA to believe the lie that Iran bombed their own school proves that underneath all the irony and posturing, they do have something that resembles a conscience. Why else would they go to such trouble to insist that these deaths have nothing to do with them?
It’s also worth imagining how differently this story would have gone if an Iranian missile had hit a school in Tel Aviv and killed 180 Israeli girls. It would be front-page news for weeks and held up for decades as proof of the utter barbarity and monstrousness of the Iranian regime.
But, as it appears, this was the good ol’ USA that exploded these schoolgirls, so expect the whole thing to be quietly swept under the rug any day now.
