The US bombed a school in Minab and now mocks the law

By Maya Ellison · Reporting from Detroit · September 18, 2026

When I was twelve, I watched the 2008 crash swallow my block in Flint, one foreclosure sign at a time.

When I was twelve, I watched the 2008 crash swallow my block in Flint, one foreclosure sign at a time. I learned early that when leaders at the top trade lives for "calculations" or "strategic moves," the debt settles in the zip codes they never visit. It is the same ledger today, just a different map.

The latest report from the UN’s Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran screams what the law demands: accountability. According to Al Jazeera and the BBC, US strikes in February 2026 may have constituted war crimes, turning the Shajareh Tayyebeh Primary School in Minab into a graveyard. This was no stray missile or "fog of war" accident. The UN mission found "reasonable grounds" to believe the US targeted the school, killing at least 156 people—120 of them children. In Lamerd, Precision Strike Missiles tore through a sports complex, killing 22 more civilians.

The White House offers no defense, only a shrug. Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly dismissed the UN Human Rights Council as "unserious nonsense," while President Donald Trump claimed "nobody" purposefully attacked the school. Yet the UN report indicts the US for acting "recklessly" and "willfully," failing its basic obligation to verify targets. This is the mechanism of power deciding that certain lives are merely acceptable losses in the pursuit of "lethality."

Maximum lethality is just a code word for impunity

To understand this carnage, look at those holding the leash. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has openly prioritized "maximum lethality" over "stupid rules of engagement." When leadership treats the laws of war as "stupid rules," they stop fighting a war and start conducting executions.

This follows the exact mechanism of the 2015 Kunduz hospital airstrike. In Afghanistan, the US bombed a Médecins Sans Frontières trauma center, killing 42 people, then spent years massaging the narrative to evade the "war crime" label. The DNA is identical: the conviction that US military objectives supersede protected civilian spaces. Whether it is a hospital in Kunduz or a primary school in Minab, the logic remains: the target is "close enough" to a military asset that the deaths of children become a rounding error.

We have seen this script play out for decades. It drove the Raqqah campaign, where urban centers were pulverized in the name of counter-terrorism. It drove the 2017 missile strikes on Syria, where Tomahawks—the same weapons used in Minab—projected power with total disregard for sovereign costs. Most recently, the international community has struggled to hold powers accountable for the 2023 Gaza airstrikes on schools and shelters. The US isn't breaking a new pattern; it is perfecting an old one.

The trap of the moral equivalence argument

The administration's most capable advocates will point to the Iranian regime—a murderous entity—to justify any means of preventing nuclear proliferation. They will cite the UN’s own findings, reported by the Daily Maverick, that the Iranian government committed crimes against humanity by killing thousands of its own protesters in a brutal crackdown.

That is a fact. It is also a diversion.

The slaughter of Iranian citizens by their own government does not grant the United States a license to bomb children in a classroom. To suggest that the Iranian regime's atrocities "balance out" the bombing of a primary school is a fraudulent use of moral equivalence. One is a regime murdering its own people to maintain power; the other is a global superpower using the world's most advanced weaponry to kill children while masquerading as the guardian of international law. You cannot claim to be the "leader of the free world" while treating the Geneva Conventions as optional suggestions.

When Anna Kelly claims the Iranian regime is the "only party" committing war crimes, she attempts to erase the blood on the floor of the Shajareh Tayyebeh school. She is betting that the world is too exhausted by the Iranian regime's evil to notice the US committing its own.

A ledger that will not be balanced by a handshake

As the UN General Assembly approaches, diplomats speak of meetings between the US, Iran, and Gulf nations. But peace cannot be negotiated atop a massacre. If the US continues to ignore the UN report and refuses to cooperate with the International Criminal Court, it confirms its view of itself as above the law.

The report provides human rights lawyers like Reed Brody "ammunition," but ammunition requires a trigger. If the US continues to withdraw from the UN Human Rights Council and dismisses international findings as "anti-American rhetoric," it isn't protecting national security—it is shielding the people who ordered the strikes from ever facing a judge.

The cost of "maximum lethality" never lands on the desks of the Pentagon or the White House; it lands on the families in Minab and Lamerd. It lands on the children who will never grow up because a US commander decided "stupid rules" obstructed a target.

The United States has spent decades telling the world that the law applies to everyone except those who write it. By bombing a school and then mocking the body that investigated the crime, this administration proves it does not want a stable world—it wants a world where its power is absolute and its crimes are invisible.

The US bombed a school in Minab and now mocks the law

Maximum lethality is just a code word for impunity

The trap of the moral equivalence argument

A ledger that will not be balanced by a handshake

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