政治
重磅报道
摧毁一所伊朗学校的美国“杀伤链”内幕
五角大楼调查人员发现,有缺陷的情报、过时的图像以及对 AI 的过度依赖,共同导致了一次导弹袭击,造成米纳布 123 名儿童死亡。
作者
Ben Bartenstein
Krishna Karra
2026 年 9 月 18 日
据参与该事件内部调查的官员透露,2 月 28 日一枚导弹袭击了一所伊朗学校,袭击发生后数小时内,五角大楼的一些人员就知道美国对此负有责任。该调查发现了官员们如今所称的一连串本可避免的失误。
那个周六,两枚战斧导弹击中了 Shajarah Tayyebeh 小学的建筑及其场地,造成 150 多人死亡,其中包括至少 123 名儿童。此次袭击摧毁了这所两层楼的学校,该校建在伊朗南部小镇米纳布一处军事大院的部分土地上。就儿童伤亡而言,这是 21 世纪美国军事瞄准失误中最致命的一次。
联合国调查人员周四表示,有合理理由认定,对米纳卜的袭击以及当天发生的另一起美国袭击构成了战争罪。美国尚未公开承认对此次学校袭击负责,而总统唐纳德·特朗普此前曾暗示这是德黑兰的过错。就在7月14日,他还对福克斯新闻表示:“我认为永远没有人能说清那里到底发生了什么。”
但在采访中,直接参与五角大楼内部调查的官员提供了一些关于该调查的首批叙述。他们说,这次袭击并非源于某一个灾难性的决定,而是一系列较小决定的累积,他们的审查还发现了一系列本可阻止这场灾难却错失的机会。这些官员与另外二十多名为本报道提供目标选定程序描述或背景信息的人一样,要求匿名以讨论敏感事项。
在2月的最后几天,特朗普政府要求发动一场压倒性的空中打击。仅在最初24小时内,就有超过1000个伊朗目标遭到打击。官员们说,这一命令压缩了最终确定目标的时间窗口,注入了一种紧迫感——再加上关于该地点的基础信息存在缺口、平民保护人员被削减,以及对人工智能技术的过度依赖——为这一致命错误埋下了伏笔。
调查的完整细节仍被严格保密。描述该调查的官员表示,他们在可分享的信息量上面临限制。此前的新闻报道显示,到3月初,一项初步内部审查认定美国很可能对米纳卜袭击负有责任。
一份关于五角大楼于3月启动的全面调查的报告尚未公布——尽管官员们表示,该报告数月来几乎已经完成。
美国中央司令部司令、下令展开调查的海军上将布拉德·库珀在5月对国会议员表示,他致力于提供透明度。然而,目前尚不清楚报告将包含多少细节,也不清楚最终会有多少内容向公众公布。
五角大楼一位发言人表示,该事件仍在调查中,并拒绝进一步置评。
在回应包括白宫何时获悉此次打击系误击等问题时,一位政府高级官员同样援引了正在进行的调查,并补充道:“美国不以平民为目标。”
本周,联合国伊朗问题独立国际事实调查团的一份报告称,美国“未能履行其尽一切可行努力核实”该学校为军事目标的义务,且这一失职“超出了疏忽的范畴”。美国国防部拒绝就该报告置评。
美国导弹袭击伊朗米纳布Shajarah Tayyebeh小学的遇难者葬礼队伍。摄像:Morteza Akhoundi/Handout via Getty Images
美国官员表示,过时的情报是一个问题。官员们称,尽管米纳卜的这处场所多年前就被认定为军事设施,但有明确证据表明它已被改建并改变了用途。他们说,反映新建工程的实体变化——在卫星图像上可见——可以追溯到近十年前,而且该场所公开作为学校运营。
对市售卫星图像的分析显示,围墙和大门的修建将学校场地与军事基地分隔开来,这些工程似乎到 2017 年已经完成。一张 2018 年的图像显示,色彩鲜艳的围墙旁边有足球场、集会队列和地面上的游乐标线。
官员们称,一些美国情报分析人员注意到了这一点。彭博社报道,6 月,一名分析人员早在 2019 年就察觉到了该场所的变化,并在一个未连接到主要军事情报数据库(该数据库为目标定位提供依据)的系统中记录了对这些改建的备注。
官员们称,在实施此次美军袭击的中央司令部内部,一些人员过度依赖 Maven Smart System 中嵌入的人工智能。Maven 由 Palantir Technologies Inc. 制造,允许用户利用 AI 赋能的软件查看和协调复杂的军事行动——从目标定位到指挥与控制——该软件将 150 多种不同的数据输入融合为一套连贯的信息,为指挥官的决策提供依据。
过去一年里,美国国防部迅速将 Maven 打造为美军体系的一大基石。数名美国军方前高级官员如今为 Palantir 工作,其中一些人曾在中央司令部坦帕总部持有高级安全许可。他们的职责是确保该软件在安全的军事环境中正常运行。
这些官员表示,中央司令部的一些人员原本期望 Maven 能够标记出为潜在目标所汇集的基础情报中的过时信息或不一致之处。目前尚不清楚他们为何会有这样的期望。
Palantir 的一位发言人表示,该公司“不对基础数据负责,也不负责识别情报缺陷”,并且没有证据表明其软件在 Minab 打击行动中存在过错。
延伸阅读:Palantir CTO 认为伊朗战争是首场重大 AI 驱动冲突
两名熟悉该公司五角大楼合同的人士表示,政府仍对输入 Maven 的信息质量负有主要责任。但他们表示,使用 Maven 等工具的人员形成与合同条款不同的操作理解,这种情况并不罕见。
据一位知情人士透露,Minab 打击行动之后,Palantir 为 Maven 构建了新能力,使其能够“重新审查基础情报,以识别会导致目标被取消资格的因素,并标记人工审查可能遗漏的不一致和不准确之处”。该人士表示,这项工作已经发现了一些异常情况。
目标库
传感器数据
变化分析
民用设施数据
其他情报
候选目标
包含详细的情报报告和相关证据
将 Minab 设施作为 IRGC 设施的情报评估使其被列入优先目标
目标审核
审查证据、时效性、可靠性
虽然底层情报此前已经过反复审查,但在这一阶段仍需接受额外审查
武器规划
确定预期效果和瞄准点,准备附带损伤评估;选择武器和时机
目标验证与法律审查
确保目标符合指挥官的目标且打击合法。依据战争法、交战规则、军事目标分析对目标进行评估
指挥批准
综合所有证据后,高级指挥官做出最终决定
以下概述重建了导弹袭击之前发生的流程。它基于美国军方非机密出版物、Palantir 的宣传材料、对直接参与五角大楼该事件调查人员的采访,以及对数十名其他现任和前任美国军方官员的描述。这些流程在不断演变;在某次行动中,其中一些步骤可能同时发生或反复出现。所展示的卫星图像来自多家商业供应商。这些图像和所展示的记录代表了可获取的情报类型,但它们并非 Minab 袭击前分析人员所能访问的具体文件。
- 情报
- Maven
- 审查
- 执行
3 月 12 日,美国众议院 120 多名民主党人致信国防部长 Pete Hegseth,询问 Minab 学校袭击事件以及人工智能(包括 Maven Smart System)在将该地点识别为目标过程中所扮演的角色。五角大楼以调查仍在进行为由,未公开回应此类问题。
据参与调查的官员称,赫格塞思的一些顾问担心,针对 Maven 的政治审查可能会破坏他们预期从该系统的进一步采用中获得的收益。

3 月 21 日被摧毁的 Shajarah Tayyebeh 小学。摄影师:Hassan Ghaedi/Anadolu/Getty Images
“杀伤链”
官员们表示,随着 2 月 28 日临近,美国国防官员接到任务,要确定他们认为能够在德黑兰还来不及回应之前就瘫痪伊朗军队的打击目标。
在中央司令部的清单上,排在前面的是伊斯兰革命卫队的海军部队——这是伊朗军事、经济和政治领域中最强大的力量。其任务是保卫——有时也扰乱——波斯湾和霍尔木兹海峡。米纳布学校选址——因其被错误地归类为 IRGC 设施且未获更正——与其他潜在目标一起被输入 Maven。参与调查的人士称,它最终成为推荐的首日打击目标之一。
与所有目标一样,米纳布选址经历了一个多阶段评估流程,军方称之为“杀伤链”。根据美国军事条令以及对现任和前任国防官员的采访,该流程的各个步骤传统上涉及情报分析师、图像专家、目标选定人员、律师、作战指挥官和发射人员。官员们表示,如今 Maven 正处于这些行动的核心——介于最初的情报输入与后续的审查阶段之间。
在过去的冲突中,拟定拟议目标清单——这项工作包括评估这些目标与作战目标是否一致——需要工作人员花费数小时才能完成。参与五角大楼内部审查的人士表示,在美国对伊朗发动袭击之前,借助 Maven,其中大部分工作被压缩到了几分钟之内。
参与调查的官员指出了他们认为在赫格塞思解散五角大楼大部分平民伤害缓解(CHM)部门后留下的缺口——据直接了解此事的人士称,这些部门的人员编制被削减了约 90%,降至不足 20 名工作人员。中央司令部的团队从 10 人缩减至 1 人。
据参与内部调查的官员称,在袭击前,没有任何 CHM 团队成员审查过 Minab 站点。官员们表示,这既是人员削减的结果,也是决定不让该团队参与规划和作战的结果。他们补充说,虽然这种审查并非强制性的,但近年来已成为例行做法。目前尚不清楚这类检查——包括绘制平民环境图、评估非战斗人员存在情况以及制定低风险打击方案——是否足以对 Minab 站点提出质疑。
2021 年 8 月喀布尔一次无人机袭击因将一名援助工作者误判为威胁而导致 10 名平民丧生后,拜登政府曾在五角大楼内部建立了平民伤害预防能力。赫格塞思将其随后对这些工作的削减描述为摆脱“拜登时代的非致命项目”。

美国国防部长皮特·赫格塞斯于3月2日在华盛顿举行的新闻发布会上回答提问。摄影师:Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images
“美国,无论所谓的国际机构怎么说,正在发动历史上最具杀伤力和最精准的空中力量打击行动,”赫格塞斯在3月2日的新闻发布会上说,此时距米纳布袭击已过去数日。“一切都在我们的条件下、以最大权限进行。没有愚蠢的交战规则,没有国家建设的泥潭,没有民主建设的操练,没有政治正确的战争。”
在赫格塞斯的领导下,美军将交付速度置于优先地位。参与五角大楼调查的人士表示,在2月28日之前匆忙敲定目标,是导致这场悲剧的原因之一。
“仓促行事可能导致错误,”劳里·布兰克(Laurie Blank)说道。她曾在拜登政府期间于2022年至2024年被任命为五角大楼总法律顾问办公室的特别顾问。她区分了预先计划的目标与在激烈战斗中临时出现的目标。“仓促打击预先计划的目标完全是另一回事,”她说,“尤其是当这些行动是主动发起的,而不是为了回应攻击——在那种情况下你没有时间进行规划。”
为什么是米纳布?
米纳布位于首都德黑兰以南800多英里(1300公里)处,坐落在关键的霍尔木兹海峡沿岸,处于数百年贸易路线与本国现代军事力量的交汇点。据参与调查的人士称,在美国对伊朗的攻击开始时,该地被认定为高价值目标。
随着该海峡在20世纪80年代的重要性日益上升,用于保护它并向波斯湾投射力量的军事资产数量也随之增加。伊斯兰革命卫队的导弹部队、海军设施和后勤营区,与这座拥有76000人口的城中渔民、教师和公务员世代居住的街区比邻而设。
Shajarah Tayyebeh小学建于近十年前,所在地块原本由伊斯兰革命卫队一支海军部队占用。五角大楼早在数年前就已将该地点编目为军事基地——这一认定在2月袭击发生前并未更新。《纽约时报》6月报道称,负责目标选择的官员使用的卫星图像已有七年未更新,且图像上并未显示该地点有一所学校。参与调查的官员表示,调查人员已将重点放在国防情报局未能对该地点重新分类一事上。
2月28日,米纳卜在晴朗的天空中醒来。店主们打开店门。渔民们在码头边卸下冷藏箱。身穿绿色格子校服的孩子们穿过这所拥有260名学生的学校大门,随后消失在教室里。
一群人权倡导者、律师和数字取证专家花了数月时间重建此次袭击,收集了当天在学校内外所发生事件的第一手描述。这个非正式联盟的成员——包括一些身在美国和欧洲的人——鉴于他们与遇难者家属接触工作的敏感性,要求匿名。他们的工作以及总部位于英国的监督组织Airwars所做的一份评估——被一些五角大楼官员视为高度可靠的来源——提供了以下叙述:
那个周六上午,首批伊朗遭袭的报道传出后,老师们纷纷致电家长,请他们来接走孩子,说学校打算提前放学。刚过上午11点,第一枚导弹击中了学校的一部分,引发爆炸,震动了整个街区。惊恐的尖叫声响彻四周。老师们把孩子们从操场领回室内,躲进一间祈祷室避难。
几分钟内,第二枚导弹袭来,金属碎片飞溅整个校园。部分屋顶坍塌。祈祷室内的孩子只有少数幸存,被埋在瓦砾之下。

学校现场张贴着此次袭击中遇难儿童和成人的遗像。摄影:Atta Kenare/AFP/Getty Images
救援车辆疾驰赶赴现场,路人也纷纷帮忙救助伤者。一些受伤的孩子被从瓦砾中拉出,另有数十名遇难者则被缓慢地逐一确认身份。一名救援队员偶然发现了一只孩子的手,已经断落,躺在地上。当同事们继续在他身旁搜寻废墟时,他失声痛哭。
一些家长只能靠衣物碎片或随身物品——一个铅笔盒、一只手镯或一只鞋——来辨认自己死去的孩子,因为许多面孔已无法辨认。Arash Gol-Azin 的父亲直到赶到太平间才得知7岁儿子的下落。直到那时,他才靠辨认儿子的袜子认出了他。
Payam Akhavan 是一位常驻多伦多的律师,曾在国际刑事法院出庭,也是平民保护方面的专家。他表示,调查人员必须查明美国官员做出了哪些努力,以确保他们瞄准的是一座军事设施。
“《日内瓦公约》规定,你必须采取一切可行措施来确认这确实是一个军事目标,”Akhavan 在周四联合国报告发布前表示。“这并不意味着每一个错误都是战争罪,因为即便你采取了一切可行措施,错误仍然会发生。
“但如果没有采取一切可行措施,”他补充道,“那就引发了刑事责任的问题。”

2 月 28 日袭击发生后,救援人员和居民在废墟中搜寻。摄影师:Abbas Zakeri/Mehr News Agency/AP
根据总部位于美国的组织 Human Rights Activists in Iran 汇编的数据,在战争爆发后的最初 39 天里,至少有 1,701 名平民丧生。这相当于平均每天 43 人,而该组织——被五角大楼一些人士视为伊朗伤亡数字的权威来源——表示这还是一个偏低的估计。
“我们应该追问的是,在短短几周内前所未有的打击节奏之下,怎么会有这么多平民丧生,”HRA 副主任 Skylar Thompson 说。
最近,伊朗官员和一个联合国机构表示,美国应对9月1日对Kuhestak的打击负责——该地位于Minab以南约20英里处——打击命中了一个正在举行婚礼的居民区,造成至少五人死亡,数十人受伤。美国副总统JD Vance本月早些时候表示,美国正在调查这一事件。
目标库
数十年来,美国军事规划人员一直维护着庞大的目标库,以备与伊朗可能发生的冲突,涵盖从有限打击到海上战争和大规模空中战役的方方面面。据熟悉相关计划的现任和前任美国官员称,这份清单多达数千个目标,包括空军基地、导弹工厂、核设施和港口。
一些潜在目标已在清单上留存多年,积累了层层叠叠的卫星图像、情报报告和法律审查。
但据曾接触过这些目标库的人士称,这些目录可能很快就会过时。建筑物出现又消失。指挥部更换驻地。曾经是军事营房的地方,如今可能建起了学校、医院和清真寺。因此,在任何特定建筑或地点最终被列入目标清单之前很久,目标库的内容就需要持续而细致的审查。
维护这些清单至关重要,但也是劳动密集型工作。参与Minab事件内部调查的官员描述了在核查——即检查基础信息是否准确、可靠和及时——方面存在的漏洞,而这些漏洞早在学校选址之前就已存在。
据直接了解此事的官员透露,一些最敏感的设施,例如伊朗的核设施——在 2025 年 6 月以色列与德黑兰为期 12 天的战争中遭到以色列攻击——在 2026 年战争之前受到了美国情报分析人员持续不断的关注。官员们补充说,像米纳布这样不太显眼的地点,则连续数月没有再受到仔细审视。
现任和前任五角大楼官员表示,战争规划者开始认为他们会有时间重新审视那些不那么紧急的地点。
这一假设在 2 月的最后几天破灭了,当时美国与伊朗官员在日内瓦的外交谈判陷入停滞,并于 2 月 26 日彻底破裂。
据参与调查的官员称,以往冲突中需要数周或数月才能完成的工作——从目标库中匹配建筑物、机场或基地等地点——这次仅用了几天就完成了。超过一千个潜在目标必须重新评估并获批。
官员们表示,当第一枚飞向米纳卜目标的战斧导弹从一艘在阿拉伯海执行任务的舰艇上发射时,整个杀伤链上已有大约三四十人参与其中。

这张来自美国中央司令部发布的视频截图显示,7 月 12 日,三艘美国 Corsair 无人水面艇袭击伊朗阿巴斯港海军基地时,港口发生爆炸。来源:美国中央司令部/美联社
大多数人驻扎在7000多英里外、位于佛罗里达州坦帕的安全设施内,研究地图、影像和数据库,为一场直到Minab袭击前48小时许多官员几十年来都认为不会发生的战争做准备。
通常,他们的一部分工作是根据卫星影像和实地情报来完善一份清单,用于生成反映该地点人员活动及随时间变化的生活模式分析。参与调查的人士表示,在伊朗这个近半个世纪以来美国的宿敌,此类情报十分有限,尤其是在该国南部。
杀伤链中的其他步骤则处理其他类型的问题。律师评估每个拟议目标是否为合法的军事目标。专家估算可能的附带损害。武器专家不仅争论该发射哪些导弹,还要争论何时发射。
每个阶段都会留下记录。分析人员对链条中的每一环节签字确认。他们被告知要向上一级报告任何不一致之处。

三月,遇难儿童的亲属在Minab的一处墓地哀悼。摄影师:Hamid Vakili/Anadolu/Getty Images
随后,高级指挥官会提出一系列问题:目标是否合法?情报是否充分?是否已采取合理预防措施以尽量减少平民伤害?据参与调查的官员称,2月28日凌晨,关于Minab地点的每一个问题,答案都是肯定的。
据参与调查的人士称,五角大楼内部调查人员审查了分析人员所使用的卫星图像、情报数据库、目标定位材料、作战聊天记录和计算机记录,得出结论:在整个杀伤链中,各方都高度确信米纳卜(Minab)设施是伊朗伊斯兰革命卫队(IRGC)的设施。
“战前,情报不足并没有真正被视为一个担忧,”一位参与内部调查的五角大楼官员说。“我们对我们的情报很有信心。米纳卜证明了你不应该过于自信。”
政治棋子
政府研究人员和审计人员已指出用于制定打击目标的主要情报数据库存在缺陷,五角大楼正着手用一个引入更多自动化的数据库来替换它。而米纳卜并非有缺陷的情报将美国精确制导武器引向错误目标的第一次。
1999年,中国驻塞尔维亚首都贝尔格莱德大使馆遭误炸,造成3人死亡、27人受伤。2015年,对阿富汗昆都士一家无国界医生医院的误炸造成42人死亡。更近一些,在五角大楼的平民伤害缓解团队被解散后不久,2025年4月对也门拉斯伊萨港的打击导致至少80名平民死亡。
袭击发生后的几个月里,Shajarah Tayyebeh 小学的孩子们已成为一种象征。他们的面孔被印在四月载着外交官飞往伊斯兰堡与美国会谈的伊朗飞机座椅靠背上。他们的形象装点着米纳布街头的纪念场所。一些家庭抱怨说,他们受伤的孩子没有得到所需的治疗。批评者指责伊朗官员利用这起学校袭击事件谋取政治利益。

袭击发生以来,遇难者的画像作为纪念被张贴在米纳布各处。摄影:Abbas/MEI/SIPA/Shutterstock
在美国,这场灾难已成为另一种政治试金石。寻求在十一月掌控国会的民主党议员正在追问这起袭击是如何发生的。
罗德岛州参议员 Jack Reed 是参议院军事委员会的高级成员,他指责五角大楼故意扣留调查结果,而他的共和党同僚、北卡罗来纳州的 Thom Tillis 则呼吁就哪里出了问题举行国会简报会。
同样在该委员会任职的参议员 Richard Blumenthal 也发出了这一呼吁。该委员会负责协助设定五角大楼约 1 万亿美元年度预算的支出上限。
“政府本应在数小时或数天内就主动公布,而如今几个月过去了,什么都没有提供,”Blumenthal 说。
“这是不可原谅的,”他补充道。
Politics
The Big Take
Inside the US ‘Kill Chain’ That Destroyed an Iranian School
Pentagon investigators have discovered that flawed intelligence, outdated imagery and an overreliance on AI contributed to a missile strike that killed 123 children in Minab.
By
Ben Bartenstein
Krishna Karra
September 18, 2026
Within hours of a Feb. 28 missile attack that hit an Iranian school, some Pentagon personnel knew the US was responsible, according to officials involved in an internal investigation of the incident. That probe found what the officials now describe as a cascade of preventable failures.
Two Tomahawk missiles struck the Shajarah Tayyebeh Elementary School building and its grounds that Saturday, killing more than 150 people, including at least 123 children. The strikes devastated the two-story school, which was built on land that was part of a military compound in the southern Iranian town of Minab. In terms of child casualties, it’s the deadliest American military targeting error of the 21st century.
United Nations investigators said Thursday that there were reasonable grounds to conclude that the strike on Minab and another US attack that took place on the same day amounted to war crimes. The US has yet to publicly accept responsibility for the school strike, and President Donald Trump has previously suggested it was Tehran’s fault. As recently as July 14, he told Fox News, “I don’t think anybody’s going to ever be able to say what happened there.”
But in interviews, officials with direct involvement in the Pentagon’s internal investigation have offered some of the first accounts of the probe. The strike didn’t result from a single catastrophic decision but an accumulation of smaller ones, they said, and their review has identified a series of missed opportunities to prevent the disaster. The officials, like more than two dozen others who provided descriptions of targeting procedures or background information for this story, asked not to be named to discuss sensitive matters.
In the final days of February, the Trump administration demanded an overwhelming aerial assault. More than 1,000 Iranian targets were hit within the first 24 hours alone. That order compressed the time frame for finalizing targets, the officials said, instilling an urgency that — combined with gaps in underlying information about the site, cuts in civilian-protection personnel and an overreliance on artificial-intelligence technology — set the stage for the deadly error.
Full details from the probe remain tightly held. Officials who described it said they faced constraints on the amount of information they could share. Previous news reports have indicated that by early March, a preliminary internal review determined the US was likely responsible for the Minab strike.
A report on the full Pentagon investigation, which commenced in March, hasn’t been released — though the officials said it has been all-but-complete for several months.
Admiral Brad Cooper, who heads US Central Command and ordered the investigation, told members of Congress in May that he’s committed to providing transparency. Yet it’s not clear how much detail will be included, nor how much of the report ultimately will be released to the general public.
A Pentagon spokesperson said the incident remains under investigation and declined to comment further.
In response to questions, including about when the White House was informed that the strike was a mistake, a senior administration official also cited the ongoing probe and added: “The United States does not target civilians.”
This week, a report from the UN’s Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran said that the US had “failed in its obligation to do everything feasible to verify” that the school was a military target and that the failure “went beyond negligence.” The US Department of Defense has declined to comment on the report.
A funeral procession for victims of the US missile strike that hit Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school in Minab, Iran. Videographer: Morteza Akhoundi/Handout via Getty Images
US officials have said that outdated intelligence was a problem. Although the site in Minab had been identified years earlier as a military compound, there was clear evidence that it had been modified and undergone a change of purpose, the officials said. Physical changes reflecting new construction — visible on satellite imagery — dated back almost a decade, they said, and the site operated openly as a school.
Analysis of commercially available satellite images shows construction of walls and entrances that separate the school site from the military base, work that appears to have been completed by 2017. An image from 2018 shows brightly painted walls alongside a soccer pitch, assembly rows and play markings on the ground.
Some US intelligence analysts took notice, the officials said. Bloomberg reported in June that one analyst detected changes to the site as early as 2019, and logged remarks about the modifications in a system that wasn’t connected to the primary military intelligence database, which informs targeting.
Inside Centcom, which conducted the US attack, some personnel relied too much on the artificial intelligence embedded in Maven Smart System, the officials said. Maven, which is made by Palantir Technologies Inc., allows users to view and coordinate complex military operations — from targeting to command and control — using AI-enabled software that fuses more than 150 different data inputs into a coherent set of information to inform commanders’ decisions.
In the past year, the Defense Department has rapidly made Maven a cornerstone of the US military apparatus. Several former senior US military officials now work for Palantir, including some with high-level security clearances in Centcom’s Tampa headquarters. Their role is to keep the software functioning inside secure military environments.
Some Centcom personnel expected Maven to flag stale information or inconsistencies in the underlying intelligence assembled for potential targets, the officials said. It’s not clear why they had such expectations.
A Palantir spokesperson said that the company “is not responsible for the underlying data nor identifying intelligence deficiencies” and that there’s no evidence that its software was at fault in the Minab strike.
Read more: Palantir CTO Sees Iran War as First Major AI-Driven Conflict
Two people familiar with the firm’s Pentagon contracts said the government retains primary responsibility for the quality of the information that’s fed into Maven. But they said it’s not uncommon for personnel who use tools such as Maven to develop operational understandings that differ from contractual terms.
After the Minab strike, Palantir built new capabilities into Maven that “re-review underlying intelligence to identify factors that would disqualify a target and flag inconsistencies and inaccuracies that human review may have missed,” according to a person familiar with the matter. That work has already caught some anomalies, the person said.
Target libraries
Sensor data
Analysis of changes
Civilian site data
Other intelligence
Candidate target
Contains detailed intelligence reports and relevant evidence
Intelligence assessment of Minab site as IRGC facility put it among priority targets
Target vetting
Review evidence, recency, reliability
While underlying intelligence is vetted earlier and repeatedly, it’s up for additional review at this point
Weapon planning
Define desired effect and aimpoint, prepare collateral damage estimate; select weapon and timing
Target validation and legal review
Ensure target meets commanders’ objective and is lawful to strike. Assess target under law of war, rules of engagement, military objective analysis
Command approval
Considering all evidence, senior commanders make the final decision
The following outline reconstructs processes that preceded the missile strike. It’s based on unclassified US military publications, on Palantir’s promotional material, on interviews with people directly involved in the Pentagon’s probe of the incident and on descriptions from dozens of other current and former US military officials. These procedures are constantly evolving; some may occur concurrently or repeatedly in a given operation. The satellite imagery presented is from several commercial providers. It and records shown represent the types of intelligence available, but they are not the specific files that were accessible to analysts ahead of the Minab attack.
- Intelligence
- Maven
- Review
- Execution
On March 12, more than 120 Democrats in the US House wrote to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth asking about the Minab school strike and the role that artificial intelligence, including Maven Smart System, played in identifying the site as a target. The Pentagon hasn’t responded publicly to such questions, citing the ongoing investigation.
Some of Hegseth’s advisers have expressed concern that political scrutiny of Maven could disrupt the benefits they anticipate from its further adoption, according to officials involved in the probe.

The destroyed Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school on March 21. Photographer: Hassan Ghaedi/Anadolu/Getty Images
The ‘Kill Chain’
As Feb. 28 approached, US defense officials were tasked with identifying strikes they thought would paralyze Iran’s military before Tehran even had a chance to respond, the officials said.
High on Centcom’s list: the naval division of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the most powerful force across the country’s military, economy and politics. It’s tasked with defending — and at times, disrupting — the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz. The Minab school site — with its uncorrected classification as an IRGC facility — was fed into Maven along with other potential targets. It ultimately emerged as one of the recommended day-one targets, people involved in the investigation said.
As all targets do, the Minab site moved through a multi-stage assessment process known by the military as the “kill chain.” Steps in that process have traditionally involved intelligence analysts, imagery specialists, targeteers, lawyers, operational commanders and launch crews, according to US military doctrine and interviews with current and former defense officials. Today, Maven sits at the heart of those operations — between the initial intelligence inputs and the latter review stages, officials said.
In past conflicts, preparing lists of proposed targets — work that includes assessing how they align with an operation’s objectives — had taken hours for staffers to complete. Ahead of the US attack on Iran, much of that work was condensed into several minutes via Maven, people involved in the Pentagon’s internal review said.
Officials involved in the investigation pointed to gaps that they said were left after Hegseth dismantled most of the Pentagon’s civilian harm mitigation, or CHM, units — cutting headcount across a number of teams by roughly 90% to fewer than 20 staff members, people with direct knowledge of the matter said. Centcom’s team was reduced from 10 to 1.
No CHM team member reviewed the Minab site before the strike, according to officials involved in the internal investigation. That was a consequence of the cuts in staffing but also a decision not to involve the group in planning and operations, the officials said. While not mandatory, that sort of review had become routine in recent years, they added. It’s unclear whether such checks, which include mapping the civilian environment, assessing noncombatant presence and developing lower-risk strike options, would have been enough to raise questions about the Minab site.
The Biden administration had built up civilian-harm-prevention capabilities within the Pentagon after an August 2021 drone strike in Kabul killed 10 civilians — based on the misidentification of an aid worker as a threat. Hegseth has characterized his subsequent cuts to those efforts as a shift away from “Biden-era, non-lethal programs.”

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth takes questions during a press conference in Washington on March 2. Photographer: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images
“America, regardless of what so-called international institutions say, is unleashing the most lethal and precise air power campaign in history,” Hegseth told a press conference on March 2, days after the Minab attack. “All on our terms with maximum authorities. No stupid rules of engagement, no nation-building quagmire, no democracy building exercise, no politically correct wars.”
Under Hegseth’s leadership, the US military has prioritized speed of delivery. People involved in the Pentagon probe said a rush to finalize targets shortly ahead of Feb. 28 contributed to the tragedy.
“Haste can lead to errors,” said Laurie Blank, who was appointed a special counsel at the Pentagon’s general counsel during the Biden administration from 2022 to 2024. She drew a distinction between planned targets and those that arise in the heat of battle. “A rush to hit pre-planned targets just isn’t the same thing,” she said, “especially when the operations are launched by choice and not in response to an attack where you are responding without time to plan.”
Why Minab?
A little more than 800 miles (1,300 kilometers) south of the capital Tehran, the city of Minab sits on the critical Strait of Hormuz, at the crossroads of centuries-old trade routes and the nation’s modern military might. As the US attack on Iran began, it was deemed a high-value target, according to people involved in the investigation.
As the strait’s significance grew in the 1980s, so did the number of military assets devoted to protecting it and projecting power into the Persian Gulf. The IRGC’s missile units, naval facilities and logistics compounds operate alongside neighborhoods where fishermen, teachers and civil servants have lived for generations in the city of 76,000.
Shajarah Tayyebeh Elementary School was built almost a decade ago on land originally occupied by an IRGC naval unit. The Pentagon had cataloged the site as a military base several years earlier — a determination that wasn’t updated before the February attack. The New York Times reported in June that targeting officials used satellite imagery that hadn’t been updated in seven years and that did not show a school at the site. Investigators have focused on the Defense Intelligence Agency’s failure to reclassify the location, officials involved in the inquiry said.
On Feb. 28, Minab awoke to clear skies. Shopkeepers unlocked their storefronts. Fishing crews unloaded ice chests along the docks. Children in green-plaid uniforms walked through the gates of the 260-pupil school, before disappearing into classrooms.
Firsthand descriptions of the events that took place in and around the school that day have been gathered by a group of human rights advocates, lawyers and digital forensics experts who’ve spent months reconstructing the attack. Members of the informal consortium — including some based in the US and Europe — asked not to be named given the sensitivity of their outreach efforts with victims’ families. Their work and an assessment by the UK-based watchdog group Airwars — viewed as a highly reliable source by some Pentagon officials — provides the following account:
After the first reports of attacks on Iran emerged that Saturday morning, teachers called parents and asked them to collect their children, saying the school planned to close early. Shortly after 11 a.m., a first missile hit part of the school, triggering an explosion that reverberated across the neighborhood. Panicked shrieks filled the air. Teachers ushered children from the playground back inside to take cover in a prayer room.
Within minutes, a second missile struck, sending metal fragments across the school. Part of the roof collapsed. Only a few children inside the prayer room survived, buried beneath the rubble.

Portraits of children and adults killed in the strike have been posted at the school site. Photographer: Atta Kenare/AFP/Getty Images
Rescue vehicles rushed to the scene while passersby helped the wounded. Some injured children were pulled from the rubble while dozens more, deceased, were slowly identified. One rescue crew member stumbled upon a child’s hand, detached and laying on the ground. He wept as colleagues continued to hunt through the debris alongside him.
Some parents were left to identify their dead children by fragments of clothing or belongings — a pencil case, bracelet or shoe — as many faces were no longer distinguishable. The father of Arash Gol-Azin didn’t learn the fate of his 7-year-old son until reaching the morgue. Only then did he spot him by identifying his sock.
Payam Akhavan, a Toronto-based lawyer who has practiced before the International Criminal Court and is an expert on civilian protection, said it’s important for investigators to determine what efforts US officials made to try to ensure they were targeting a military installation.
“The Geneva Convention says you must take all feasible measures to determine that this is, in fact, a military objective,” said Akhavan, who spoke before Thursday’s UN report was published. “This does not mean that every mistake is a war crime, because mistakes will be made, even if you take all feasible measures.
“But if all feasible measures were not taken,” he added, “then that raises a question of criminal responsibility.”

Rescue workers and residents search through the rubble in the aftermath of the Feb. 28 strike. Photographer:Abbas Zakeri/Mehr News Agency/AP
At least 1,701 civilians were killed in the opening 39 days of the war, according to data compiled by the US-based group Human Rights Activists in Iran. That’s an average of 43 people a day, and the group — viewed by some in the Pentagon as an authoritative source for Iranian casualty figures — said it’s a low estimate.
“We should be asking how so many civilians were killed amid an unprecedented tempo of strikes over just a matter of weeks,” said Skylar Thompson, HRA’s deputy director.
More recently, Iranian officials and a UN body said the US was responsible for a Sept. 1 strike on Kuhestak — some 20 miles south of Minab — that hit a residential area where a wedding party was under way and killed at least five people with dozens more injured. The US is investigating the incident, Vice President JD Vance said earlier this month.
Target Libraries
For decades, American military planners had maintained extensive target libraries in anticipation of potential conflict with Iran, encompassing everything from limited strikes to maritime war and major air campaigns. The list stretched into the thousands and included air bases, missile factories, nuclear facilities and ports, according to current and former US officials familiar with the plans.
Some potential targets had remained on the books for years, accumulating layers of satellite imagery, intelligence reports and legal reviews.
But these catalogs can age quickly, according to people who’ve dealt with them. Buildings appear and disappear. Headquarters switch locations. Where a military barracks once stood, schools, hospitals and mosques may now exist. So the libraries’ contents require close and continual review well before any particular building or site winds up on a target list.
Maintaining the lists is critical but labor-intensive. Officials involved in the internal investigation of the Minab incident described gaps in vetting — or checking whether the underlying information is accurate, reliable and timely — that came well before the school site was selected.
Some of the most sensitive sites, such as Iran’s nuclear facilities — attacked by Israel in its 12-day war with Tehran in June 2025 — faced relentless attention from US intelligence analysts ahead of the 2026 war, according to officials with direct knowledge of the matter. Less prominent locations, such as Minab, went months without receiving another close look, the officials added.
War planners start to think they’ll have time to revisit the less urgent sites, current and former Pentagon officials said.
That assumption evaporated during the final days of February as diplomatic talks between US and Iranian officials in Geneva faltered and then collapsed on Feb. 26.
Work that had unfolded in previous conflicts over weeks or months — matching sites from the library, such as buildings, airfields or bases — was completed in a matter of days, according to officials involved in the probe. More than a thousand potential targets had to be reassessed and approved.
By the time the first Tomahawk missile bound for the Minab site left its launcher on a ship operating in the Arabian Sea, roughly three dozen people were involved along the kill chain, the officials said.

This still from a video released by US Central Command shows an explosion at Bandar Abbas Naval Base, Iran, as three US Corsair unmanned surface vessels hit the port on July 12. Source: US Central Command/AP
Most sat in secure facilities more than 7,000 miles away in Tampa, Florida, studying maps, imagery and databases in preparation for a war that, until 48 hours before the Minab attack, many officials had believed for decades wouldn’t occur.
Typically, part of their work entails refining a list based on satellite imagery and on-the-ground intelligence that’s used to create a pattern-of-life analysis reflecting human movements on the site and changes over time. In Iran, a bitter US adversary for almost half a century, such intelligence was limited, especially in the south of the country, people involved in the probe said.
Additional steps in the kill chain address other types of issues. Lawyers assess whether each proposed target is a lawful military objective. Specialists estimate potential collateral damage. Weapons experts debate not only which missiles to fire but when.
Every stage leaves a record. Analysts sign off on each piece of the chain. They’re told to report any inconsistencies to superiors.

Relatives of children who were killed mourn at a cemetery in Minab in March. Photographer: Hamid Vakili/Anadolu/Getty Images
Then a series of questions is asked by the senior commander: Is the target lawful? Is there sufficient intelligence? And have reasonable precautions been taken to minimize civilian harm? In the early hours of Feb. 28, the answer to each question about the Minab site was yes, according to the officials involved in the probe.
The Pentagon’s internal investigators, who examined the satellite imagery, intelligence databases, targeting materials, operational chat logs and computer records that analysts used, concluded that there was high confidence throughout the kill chain that the Minab site was an IRGC facility, according to people involved in the probe.
“Insufficient intel wasn’t really viewed as a concern before the war,” said one Pentagon official involved in the internal probe. “We were confident in our intel. Minab proved you should never be too confident.”
Political Pawns
Government researchers and auditors have noted deficiencies in the primary intelligence database that’s used to develop strike targets, and the Pentagon is working to replace it with one that will introduce more automation. And Minab isn’t the first time that flawed intelligence has directed US precision weapons toward the wrong target.
The accidental bombing of the Chinese Embassy in the Serbian capital Belgrade in 1999 killed three people and injured 27 others. A mistaken 2015 airstrike on a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz in Afghanistan killed 42 people. More recently, soon after the Pentagon’s civilian-harm-mitigation teams were disbanded, a strike on the Ras Ina port in Yemen in April 2025 resulted in at least 80 civilian deaths.
In the months since the attack, the children of Shajarah Tayyebeh Elementary have become symbols. Their faces were plastered on the backs of the seats of Iranian planes ferrying diplomats to Islamabad for talks with the US in April. They adorn memorials on the streets of Minab. Some families have complained that their injured children haven’t received the treatment they need. Critics accuse Iranian officials of leveraging the school attack to their political advantage.

Since the attack, portraits of victims have been posted as memorials across Minab. Photographer: Abbas/MEI/SIPA/Shutterstock
In the US, the disaster has become a different sort of political touchstone. Democratic lawmakers, who are seeking to take control of the Congress in November, are asking how the attack could have happened.
Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, accused the Pentagon of deliberately withholding the results of the investigation, while his Republican counterpart, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, called for congressional briefings on what went wrong.
That call is echoed by Senator Richard Blumenthal, who also sits on the committee, which helps set spending caps for the Pentagon’s roughly $1 trillion annual budget.
“The administration should have been forthcoming within hours or days and here we are months later and nothing has been provided,” Blumenthal said.
“It is unforgivable,” he added.