United Nations says US may have committed war crimes in Iran: What it means

EXPLAINERUN-mandated probe finds the US unlawfully struck an Iranian school and sports centre, killing children; White House rejects findings.Women in front of images depicting Minab primary school students who were killed in a US air strike on February 28, in Minab, Iran [Majid Asgaripour/WANA/Reuters]Published On 18 Sep 2026A United Nations-mandated fact-finding mission has concluded that the United States may have committed war crimes when it carried out two strikes on Iran in February 2026 – one on a primary school in Minab, the other on a sports complex in Lamerd.The Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran submitted its findings to the UN-human-rights-council" class="entity-link entity-organization" data-entity-id="3938" data-entity-type="organization">UN Human Rights Council after months of investigation into the February strikes, when the US and Israel began the war on Iran amid stalled nuclear negotiations. It concluded that there were reasonable grounds to believe the US acted “recklessly” in the strikes.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemslist 1 of 3UN fact-finding mission says US committed possible war crimes in Iranlist 2 of 3US approves visas for top Iranian leaders to attend UN General Assemblylist 3 of 3Iran expels Swedish diplomat in retaliatory moveend of listNeither Washington nor Israel granted the mission access to personnel or responded to its requests for information, so investigators relied, instead, on satellite imagery, verified video, weapons analysis and witness accounts from Iranian sources and independent organisations.“The Mission concluded that when identifying and directing its attack against the primary school in Minab, whose civilian nature is apparent, the US failed in its obligation to do everything feasible to verify that it was a military objective,” the report stated.Here’s what we know.What happened in Minab and Lamerd?On February 28, during the opening hours of the joint US-Israeli assault on Iran, missiles hit the Shajareh Tayyebeh Primary School in Minab, Hormozgan province in southern Iran, at about 10:30am local time (07:00 GMT).The school was roughly 72 metres from an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) naval facility but was separated from it by a wall, had its own entrance, and was visible in satellite imagery as a functioning school, with children’s murals, a playground and classrooms.Investigators found that the school had been struck twice. The first strike hit the lower floor; as staff moved children to a prayer room upstairs, a second hit the upper floor, killing many of them.Local officials put the death toll at 156, including 120 schoolchildren and 26 female teachers. Independent sources cited by the UN mission put the toll at 157, including 15 children aged six.While the Trump administration initially tried to place the blame on Iranian forces, weapons analysts identified a missile used in the strike as a US Tomahawk Land Attack Missile, which Iran does not possess, from fragments at the site.At about 5:10pm (13:40 GMT) on February 28, the same day as the Minab strike, there was an air strike on the Shahid Haj Khalil Naimi Cultural and Sports Complex in Lamerd, Fars province – also in the south of the country – a facility the UN-mandated mission said had no military use.Verified video showed one missile exploding over a nearby residential area, then a second directly above the centre. Local officials reported 22 deaths, including four children, and more than 100 injuries. An adjacent school was also damaged.What has the US said about these strikes?Since evidence emerged of the Tomahawk missile at the site of the Minab school strike, the US has not disputed responsibility.On May 19, CENTCOM commander Admiral Brad Cooper said preliminary Pentagon findings “correlated” the strike with US forces. In June, US President Donald Trump said that “nobody” purposefully attacked the school.The mission also cited reporting by The New York Times and Reuters revealing that a preliminary Pentagon investigation attributed the strike to outdated intelligence that had wrongly identified the school as part of the adjacent military site.Washington, however, does dispute responsibility for the Lamerd strike.CENTCOM has claimed the damage is consistent with an Iranian Hoveyzeh cruise missile.However, the mission rejected that finding, citing weapons experts who identified design differences ruling out the use of a Hoveyzeh and pointing, instead, to a US-made Precision Strike Missile, a weapon the US has publicly confirmed using in Iran for the first time.What is the White House saying about the UN mission report?The Trump administration disputes its findings.White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly told Al Jazeera: “The UN-human-rights-council" class="entity-link entity-organization" data-entity-id="3938" data-entity-type="organization">UN Human Rights Council has accomplished nothing for human rights, spouting unserious nonsense for decades.”“The only party in this conflict that has committed war crimes is the Iranian regime, which has murdered thousands of its own people, killed Americans overseas, executed acts of terrorism in the Strait of Hormuz, and launched indiscriminate attacks against its neighbours in the region,” she added.“The president is courageously ensuring that such an evil country never possesses a nuclear weapon, which will make the entire world safer and more stable.”What is Iran saying about this?Iran has publicly rejected the US denials of the Lamerd strike, insisting the missile responsible was American, not Iranian, and has cited the strikes on Minab and Lamerd as evidence of what it calls indiscriminate attacks by Washington against civilians.Iranian officials, including Minab Prosecutor Ebrahim Taheri and the Lamerd County Sports and Youth Department, have published their own casualty figures for both sites, putting the Minab toll at 156 and the Lamerd toll at 22.Iran has previously accused the US and Israel of committing crimes against humanity throughout the war, and has called for international accountability over the strikes.What does ‘war crime’ mean here, legally?International humanitarian law requires parties to distinguish military from civilian targets and take “all feasible” precautions before launching strikes.Reed Brody, a human rights lawyer and member of the International Commission of Jurists, told Al Jazeera that not every violation of the laws of war meets the threshold for a war crime, however.“For any crime, there has to be an intent element,” he said, adding that no one is alleging the US intended to hit a girls’ school. The relevant standard, he said, is recklessness. Recklessness means acting with awareness of a substantial risk of an unlawful outcome and proceeding regardless. The mission’s report describes this as acting with “dolus eventualis”, a mental state that, under international humanitarian law, is legally sufficient to establish the specific war crime of launching an indiscriminate attack.Brody said the mission’s “recklessness” finding rests on three factors: outdated targeting data, a building “readily identifiable” as a school, and a US administration he said had made “a practice of weakening and dismantling the systems intended to minimise collateral damage”.He cited cuts to the Pentagon’s civilian harm mitigation office and remarks by Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth favouring “maximum lethality, not tepid legality over stupid rules of engagement”.The mission concluded the US acted “willfully” with “the requisite mental element of recklessness”, and that its failure to update targeting information “went beyond mere negligence”.Both incidents could meet the legal threshold for the war crime of launching an indiscriminate attack.Brody said the US has, at minimum, committed an “internationally wrongful act” by striking civilian sites, drawing a comparison with Nicaragua’s 1980s case against the US over the mining of its harbours after which Washington withdrew its acceptance of the ICJ’s general jurisdiction.Will there be any consequences for the US?Brody said the report carries no automatic legal consequences.“It doesn’t by itself generate any consequences,” he said, adding that such findings can nonetheless “form the basis for other proceedings”, as UN reports have in The Gambia’s genocide case against Myanmar and South Africa’s case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague.