UN War Crimes Report: US Strikes in Iran Under Fire

The UN war crimes report submitted on Thursday, September 17, landed days after President Donald Trump warned that he was weighing a major assault that could annihilate the Iranian regime. The Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran said it had reasonable grounds to believe that two United States military strikes carried out in Iran in February constituted war crimes, and it also found that Iranian authorities committed crimes against humanity during their deadly crackdown on anti-government protests.

At the center of the report is the February 28 strike on the Shajareh Tayyebeh Primary School in the southern city of Minab. A US Tomahawk missile hit the school, killing more than 150 people, including around 120 children, according to Iranian officials cited by Reuters. CNN reported that 156 people died, including 120 children and 26 teachers. The UN experts concluded that the school was a clearly identifiable civilian object and found no evidence that it was being used for military purposes, ruling the attack indiscriminate and therefore a war crime under international law.

The investigators also examined a second February 28 strike on a sports complex in the southern city of Lamerd, which damaged nearby residential buildings and a school and killed 22 civilians. The report concluded that strike was indiscriminate as well. US Central Command said in a statement in March that American forces had not launched strikes into Lamerd that day, a claim the UN findings now dispute. According to the report, the United States relied on intelligence suggesting a senior Iranian military commander was present at the school site but failed to adequately verify the information, acting recklessly despite the substantial risk of striking civilians.

The mission did not spare Tehran. It found that Iranian authorities carried out a widespread and systematic attack against civilians during protests that erupted in late December, involving unlawful killings, torture, arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances and severe restrictions on freedom of expression. The report said the toll was likely far higher than the official figures of 3,038 killed and 25,000 injured, in what rights groups describe as the biggest crackdown since Shiite Muslim clerics took power in 1979. The Iranian government did not grant the investigators unhindered access, responding to only about a quarter of the mission's information requests.

The White House dismissed the findings. A spokeswoman said the only party to the conflict that had committed war crimes was the Iranian regime, which she accused of murdering thousands of its own people, killing Americans overseas and launching indiscriminate attacks on its neighbors. The State Department said the administration did not give credibility to the report's findings, noting that Trump withdrew the United States from the UN Human Rights Council in February 2025. The Pentagon said its own internal investigation of the Minab strike was ongoing, though CNN reported that the review has been stuck for months and that commanders bypassed warnings that targeting intelligence was severely out of date.

Trump raises the stakes

The report arrived amid fresh escalation talk. Trump told Axios on Thursday that he was poised to make a big decision on whether to launch a major assault to annihilate the Iranian regime, ahead of a planned meeting with Persian Gulf leaders next week. The Iran war began in late February with US-Israeli strikes and has since ground global energy markets: tit-for-tat attacks on shipping in and around the Strait of Hormuz pushed Brent crude above 100 dollars a barrel earlier in September. A UK navy agency said a second tanker was hit by a projectile in the strait early Friday, hours after reporting another vessel under attack, while Iran claimed to have struck a ship attempting an illegal crossing.

The US blockade on the waterway has now redirected 105 commercial vessels heading into or out of Iranian ports, according to US Central Command, keeping more than 30 million barrels of Iranian crude bottled up in the Persian Gulf. GenZ NewZ also reported this week on Saudi air defenses intercepting a Houthi ballistic missile over Riyadh, a sign of how widely the conflict has spread across the region.

What the findings could mean

The report will be submitted to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, and its findings could be used by international courts such as the International Criminal Court, CNN noted. The United States is not a member of the ICC, but it does have its own war crimes laws. The investigators called for both Washington and Tehran to halt violations and provide reparations to victims, based on interviews, satellite imagery and documentation from credible organizations.

For now, neither side shows any sign of backing down. Trump has framed the confrontation as a mission to ensure Iran never obtains a nuclear weapon, while Tehran accuses Washington and its allies of waging war on the country. The UN mission's report adds a new legal dimension to a conflict already marked by civilian suffering on both sides, and its conclusions are likely to fuel debate over accountability long after the current fighting ends.