Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) renewed her condemnation of the Trump administration’s war with Iran on Friday, declaring in a post on X that a U.S. military strike on an Iranian elementary school was the deadliest American targeting error of the 21st century in terms of child casualties. The Massachusetts Democrat, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, called the strike “horrific” and demanded that “this war needs to end – now.”
The post, published at 1:15 p.m. on September 25, 2026, revives scrutiny of the February 28 strike on the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ school in Minab, in Iran’s Hormozgan province, an incident that has haunted the Trump administration for nearly seven months without a public resolution.
The Full Post
Warren’s post, in its entirety, read:
“The U.S. strike on the Iranian elementary school was the deadliest American military targeting error of the 21st century in terms of child casualties.
Horrific.
This war needs to end – now.”
What Happened at the Shajareh Tayyebeh School
The strike Warren referenced occurred on February 28, 2026, the opening day of joint U.S.-Israeli military operations against Iran. Reuters reported in early March, citing two U.S. officials, that military investigators believed it was likely American forces were responsible for the strike, though the Pentagon had not reached a final conclusion. Iran’s ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, Ali Bahreini, said the strike killed 150 students; other Iranian officials and outlets have cited tolls ranging from roughly 120 to more than 170 people, the overwhelming majority of them schoolchildren.
Munitions analysts who reviewed satellite imagery and video of the aftermath for Reuters concluded the school and an adjacent compound operated by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps were hit by multiple, near-simultaneous strikes using air-delivered explosive munitions. According to archived copies of the school’s own website, the facility had operated for years as a girls’ elementary school situated beside — but separate from — the IRGC compound.
A Pentagon Investigation Still Unresolved
Nearly seven months after the strike, the Pentagon has yet to release its findings. Bloomberg reported in September, citing officials involved in the internal investigation, that flawed intelligence, outdated satellite imagery and heavy reliance on artificial intelligence software — including the Maven Smart System built by Palantir — contributed to the targeting failure. Investigators reportedly found that vetting of the target list, which in past conflicts might have taken hours of staff review, was compressed into minutes with the help of the AI system.
NBC News reported earlier this year that preliminary findings pointed to outdated intelligence and identified a U.S. munition as the likely cause, with a geolocated video appearing to show an American Tomahawk missile striking the compound next to the school. Lawmakers in both parties have raised concerns that classifying the investigation’s final results could shield the administration from public accountability.
A U.N. Panel’s War Crimes Finding
The controversy gained new weight on September 18, when a U.N. Independent International Fact-Finding Mission concluded there were reasonable grounds to believe the United States had committed a war crime in the Minab strike, along with a separate attack on a sports complex in Lamerd that killed 22 people. The panel’s report, submitted to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva, found the school strike constituted an indiscriminate attack that killed or injured civilians and damaged civilian infrastructure.
U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk had earlier told the Human Rights Council the bombing evoked “visceral horror” and that the images of destroyed classrooms and grieving parents showed who pays the highest price in war: civilians with no say in the decisions that led to conflict.
Administration Pushback
The White House has repeatedly rejected the war crimes characterization. Responding to the U.N. findings, White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said the Human Rights Council had “accomplished nothing for human rights” and argued that Iran, not the United States, was the party responsible for war crimes in the conflict.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth acknowledged in March that the strike was under investigation, telling reporters the U.S. military does not target civilians. Secretary of State Marco Rubio similarly said the Department of War would investigate if the strike were found to be American, but referred further questions to the Pentagon. Central Command spokesperson Capt. Timothy Hawkins has said it would be inappropriate to comment while the investigation continues.
Warren’s Long-Running Campaign Against the War
Friday’s post is the latest in a monthslong campaign by Warren against the war and the administration’s handling of the school strike. In a Senate floor speech on March 3, days after the strike, Warren said Trump had dragged the country into “a reckless, illegal war with Iran” based on “lies” and without an imminent threat to the United States, arguing that the Constitution vests the power to declare war in Congress alone.
Warren has also tied the school strike to the war’s broader toll. In a statement following the U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding, she said Trump “should have never dragged the United States into war with Iran in the first place,” citing 14 servicemembers killed, hundreds injured, rising gas and grocery prices, and “countless innocent civilians, including children at an Iranian school for girls,” among the war’s costs.
Congress Presses for Accountability
Warren has joined dozens of Senate colleagues in demanding answers from the Pentagon. In March, she was among more than 40 Democratic senators, led by Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who wrote to the Department of Defense seeking details on whether U.S. forces conducted the strike and what accountability measures would follow.
Separately, Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.), Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), Patty Murray (D-Wash.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Jack Reed (D-R.I.) and Chris Coons (D-Del.) issued a joint statement calling the strike “appalling and unacceptable under any circumstance,” and pointed to Hegseth’s earlier remark that U.S. strikes in Iran would not be bound by “stupid rules of engagement” as a particular source of concern.
As recently as July, Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) led a bipartisan group of senators, Warren included, in pressing Hegseth to release the Pentagon’s findings on the strike.
On the Ground in Minab
Seven months after the strike, the Shajareh Tayyebeh school has become a memorial. The Associated Press reported this month that the building’s blue gate still bears the symbols meant to welcome children, but the walkway now leads visitors past photographs of the dead. Hormozgan Gov. Mohammad Ashouri Taziani has said the ruins will be preserved as a war museum, and a section of Minab’s cemetery has been set aside for victims of the strike; residents told the AP that three bodies have still not been recovered.
The Trump administration has yet to formally accept responsibility for the strike or make its investigation’s conclusions public, even as independent reporting — including AP’s own reconstruction of the attack — has found evidence tying at least one U.S. missile to the school. That silence, now stretching toward seven months, is the backdrop against which Warren renewed her call on Friday for the war to end.