The Global Story: Iran school strike: Will the truth come out?

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. This is Danielle Robay from Bookmarked by Rees's Book Club. A new car is kind of like a new book. It takes you places you never thought you could go. What will you drive into the next chapter of your life? It's fun to dream about your next car, but when you're done dreaming, you need to head to Cars.com. Cars.com has the tools and expert advice to help you find your dream car. Their advanced search filters allow you to explore 2 million new and used cars so that you can find the perfect car. Start your search with Cars.com. Where to next? Hey there, this is Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C.

0:43And I'm Tristan Redman in London, and we're the hosts of the Global Story podcast. We're bringing you our best episode from this week. And for those of you all that might be new to our show, we here at The Global Story dive deep every weekday on one big story that looks at where the world and America meet. Every one of our episodes is about the interplay between the United States and the rest of the planet. How Trump's presidency is shaping the world and how China is rising to challenge the United States. That's right. And how the rest of the world is struggling to find its place around those superpower nations.

1:19To hear more, you can find us every weekday by searching for The Global Story wherever you get your podcasts. Now, on to today's show. This summer, we're returning to some of the big unresolved stories of this year. And one of the stories that we keep talking about on our team happened on Saturday, February 28th, in the opening hours of the first day of the U.S.-Israel war. There was an attack in the south of Iran, in the city of Minab, a missile hit an elementary school, killing 120 children. It was the deadliest civilian attack of this war to date. Experts say the evidence indicates it was American forces that hit the school.

1:59Though the U.S. government has not admitted responsibility. It's been five months now since that deadly strike. And if you're here in the U.S., you may have heard very little about the school since it was first hit. But in Iran, the school is in some ways the story of this war. The faces of the little kids who were killed are plastered around the country. Their memory is a constant presence. From the BBC, I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. And welcome to The Global Story, our show about where the world and America meet. Today on the show, the BBC visits Iran and the ruins of that school.

2:42Coming up, we'll hear from our colleague Tom Bateman, who covers the U.S. State Department. He has been trying for months to get answers from the U.S. government about the school strike. But first, I spoke to Nawal al-Maghafi, the BBC's senior international investigations correspondent, who's just returned from a big reporting trip traveling across Iran. Nawal reported from Iran on condition that none of her material is used on the BBC's Persian service. These restrictions apply to all international media organizations operating in Iran. So we went in via Turkey and then we traveled about 15 hours into Tehran.

3:20And then from Tehran, we took this train journey and it took us through some of the most strategic points in Iran. You know, we passed by Natanz and Fordow, the two main nuclear sites. One of the stops was Qom and from there to Bandar Abbas. And Qom is the religious Shia center, is that correct? Exactly.

3:39Nawal Al Maghafi:And then from there, we went to Bandar Abbas, which is where the Strait of Hormuz is. We are right at the heart of the Strait of Hormuz. And behind me is an international ship that's been captured by the Iranians. And from Bandar Abbas, we then went to Minab, which is the site of one of the most significant attacks in this war. A school in which 156 people were killed, 120 of them children. And what did you go there, Nawal, hoping to find out? The war broke out and I had been speaking to the authorities asking for a visa. And it took us a couple of months, but it seemed like as soon as we said we wanted to go visit the school in Minab, that expedited things.

4:21You know, they were like, OK, you can get a visa right away. You know, send over your paperwork. They put a date for us to arrive in Iran. And things were in motion. But, you know, it's obviously the authorities steer you to go and see places that they feel like will benefit them. Why is it your sense that the Iranian authorities were keen for you to visit? You say that they were open to it and sort of expedited your visa.

4:48Nawal Al Maghafi:Well, firstly, let's just talk about February 28th. You know, that was quite a huge, significant day in the war. That's when the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed. And that was Washington and Israel's way of saying, look, we've already killed the supreme leader of this regime within the first day of the war. But on that very same day, the biggest civilian death toll of this war that we know of happened. The Iranian regime, their point of view is Washington and Israel have sold you this war that it's only going to target militants and military sites. But no, they're also killing civilians.

5:26They're killing our children. And for many Iranians on the ground, especially those who were welcoming of this intervention because they thought it would topple the regime quite quickly, what happened in Minab made them rethink how they felt. I'm not talking about everyone, but quite a lot of people we spoke to say, you know, we thought that this intervention would topple the regime immediately, but we didn't quite understand the human cost. I mean, wherever you go in Iran, these children's photos are kind of plastered on billboards. Every single person we spoke to, even without prompting them, spoke to us about Minab and how they felt about it, whether they were with the regime or whether they were against the regime.

6:12And we spoke to a lot of people off camera who are against the regime and still said, you know, that was devastating. And so it's worked for them to make that case. But for us, I knew that's why they really wanted to take us to the school. And so I was really kind of mindful to make sure that we get as many voices as possible and speak to people who were at those protests to find out how they feel about what's going on now. Of course, those voices aren't on camera because going on camera, speaking against the regime can get you in serious trouble in Iran. You know, we're hearing about these executions that are taking place right now.

6:49Nawal Al Maghafi:But it was important for us to have those voices in the piece, regardless of how we illustrate them, because, you know, their stories are very important for you to get a full picture of how people feel. No, it's really informative for me to hear, though, how so many people, you say, brought up the school strike unprompted, because that's how much it lives in the consciousness of how this war has unfolded in Iran. And I want to get a sense from you of what you learned about what happened in Minab on February 28th. So I met this teacher. Her name is Amina Nadimi and she was the first grade teacher.

7:27Nawal Al Maghafi:She had taught first grade for about six years in this school, the Shajar al-Tayyaba school in Minab. And so she knew children in first grade, second grade, third grade, all the way till the sixth grade because she taught them in their first year in that school. And she told me that on that day, you know, they didn't even know that the war had broken out. It was just another day at school. You know, the children were in their classrooms. It was Ramadan. And so outside in the garden, they were all in the prayer room reciting Quran. And she said that the head teacher had heard that the war had broken out.

8:01Nawal Al Maghafi:And she at first thought, well, they're not going to hit Minab. You know, there's nothing significant, you know, of military significance in Minab. And then she heard that they had attacked Minab quite far away. And so she decided to call all the parents and tell them, you need to pick up your kids because we don't know what's going to happen. So many parents started arriving and some of them were successful in picking up their kids and getting away from the school. And then the attack happened. So the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps have this compound and the school is within that compound.

8:37Nawal Al Maghafi:Now, many people told us that this compound hadn't been used for military purposes for over 10 years. But still, the school is within that compound. It's fenced off, but it's all quite close to each other. And so they'd hit the compound and that really shook the school. You know, a lot of people who were in the school thought it was the school itself that had been hit. So a lot of people had started to flee. But Amina Nadimi tells me, you know, my kids were in first grade. I couldn't let them just run out by themselves. And then she said, within moments of me trying to get their backpacks on because they refused to leave without them, the other strike happened and then everything went black.

9:13She was hit in the head. And she said the kids that were with her, she held them so tightly.

9:20Nawal Al Maghafi:I think five of them survived. And then when she came out of the rubble, she thought that all those children whose parents had come for them had escaped. And then what she realized was that they hadn't made it out of the school because so many parents were rushing in when they heard the first attack and were actually caught up in the heart of the strike. So all of them were killed in the attack. And then, you know, we spoke to Reza, who was the first Red Crescent first responder to come to the scene. And, you know, Minab is a very tight-knit community. Everyone knows each other. And he said as soon as he ran in, he saw a relative.

10:01He was begging that, just found my child, found my son. And I know that there is no one alive. And I couldn't tell her that your son is not alive. He just could not get himself to tell her. I mean, he's volunteering. A lot of these Red Crescent guys in Iran are volunteers with very little training who are doing it for free. When I close my eyes, even nowadays, I just remember these things that I have seen here. It's very hard for me. I had read so much about the school, but nothing prepares you for the gravity and magnitude of what happened until you walk through those empty classrooms. And do you walk through empty classrooms, Nawal?

10:46Does the school still look like a school? So most of it is rubble. They are still sifting through the rubble because one family still has no remains for their son. And as they were sifting through the rubble, did you just get this from the rubble? You know, they found this notebook.

11:05Nawal Al Maghafi:He's just found a little girl's notebook in the rubble. It was a notebook of a young girl called Maya Salari and she was eight years old. She was killed with her brother who was in the first grade. And their mother had picked them up. And so she was killed too. You can only see two classrooms that are still standing. Yes, it was two classrooms and a hallway. Everything else is destroyed. But in those two classrooms are, you know, what a normal children's classroom looks like in any school. Even here, you know, you saw the writing on the walls, their homework hanging on the walls, you know, children's desks, pencil cases, school bags.

11:49You know, I've gone to a lot of different bombing sites throughout my career, but going to a children's school whilst parents are still visiting every day and in mourning was incredibly hard.

12:04Nawal Al Maghafi:And I think what was particularly hard was going to the grave site. So there is a cemetery only for the children that were killed in the school and teachers and parents who were killed. It is just row after row of little, small graves. There was this young girl who was rollerblading through the graves. She doesn't understand what has happened because she's so young. She, you know, she shouldn't need to understand something like this. And it really made me think of my own children. And I was like, you know, how would you even explain this to a child? It's really, really humbling to hear you describe what you heard and what you saw in Mina.

12:47because from a news perspective, at least here in Washington, D.C., the Iran war story has moved on. You know, there were many, many more strikes after that first day. Then, of course, there was a blockage of the Strait of Hormuz, a focus on the economic impact worldwide. Then talk of a ceasefire or maybe not a ceasefire. But it's very clear in hearing from you that the Iranian families grieving the loss of their children, life has not moved on. It definitely hasn't moved on. When we were at the school, they were holding a prayer and they hold it every day. And all the parents and teachers who survived come together in that site of rubble and pray together.

13:26But, you know, it's very hard for them to move on when they haven't had a clear answer about who was responsible for the killing of their children and their colleagues and, you know, fellow parents. And that is something that really came across while speaking to people is they want accountability. Who do they blame? Well, I mean, you know, of course, all the reporting and all the evidence suggests that the U.S. was responsible for this attack. And did that come up in your conversations? Yeah, I mean, a lot of people were talking about it being the U.S.

14:01Nawal Al Maghafi:A lot of them said Trump is responsible for what happened in the school. Yeah, individually, exactly. You know, one of the mothers I spoke to, Mesume, her daughter Seteesh, who was nine years old, was killed in the school. and she has other daughters. They were sitting with her beside the grave of Setehash.

14:22Nawal Al Maghafi:And she was just, before I even started to interview her, just crying. She was so angry when I brought up the question of the US and she sent a message to President Trump. I can't remember her exact words, but, you know, she said that I hope he gets what he deserves and that she wants justice. She wants accountability. She wants to know who was responsible for what happened to that school. Now, while we're now quite a few months on from when that first strike on the school took place and since this war began, did you get a sense from any of the people you spoke with that there is a growing frustration at all with their own Iranian government?

15:05Or is most of the frustration directed towards the U.S. government and towards President Trump? We got a mix of responses to that question. You know, of course, the people we spoke to on camera have to be really careful about what they say. They could get themselves in serious trouble if they say anything against the government. And so many of them told us, you know, that they want this war to end, that the impact of this war, especially economically, is, you know, having a huge impact on their lives, and that they feel the regime is winning this war. You know, A lot of people told us it has unified us.

15:44Even if you were against the regime beforehand, now you're with it because you don't want this foreign intervention. But then also we spoke to people off camera, people whose testimony we kept anonymous. In my opinion, America has sort of lost the war. It's lost its way. One of them said, I welcome this war, but I feel like the kind of ambitions of this war have changed. This campaign became about oil and the Strait of Hormuz. The people mean nothing. They're irrelevant. The people are no longer a consideration. And then we also spoke to someone else. She told us, I do think that the government has become weaker.

16:22The regime hasn't gotten stronger, but the bullying is more intense. I think because America is trying to negotiate and we have closed the strait that they are powerful. But in my opinion, as an Iranian living in Iran, the regime has no power. The power of any country is within the people of that place. I think it's really important to add that two things can be true at the same time. You can be anti the regime and want change for your country, but also be against this foreign intervention in your country. And I think that's something that's kind of been lost in some of the coverage. You know, people think, well, if they don't want the war, then they must be pro-regime.

17:00Yes. And that's not true. A lot of Iranians we spoke to do want change, do want a better future, but also don't want bombs dropping on their homes and don't feel that this war is achieving anything that will get them any closer to what they're hopeful for. Thus far, no one has claimed responsibility for the strike on that school. And I want to understand, Nawal, how has this actually unfolded in terms of who is deemed to be responsible and what evidence there is for that? On the day of the attack, there were two waves of attacks. One wave, which happened early in the morning, which is when the school itself was hit.

17:42There is no video footage of that attack specifically. And then a little while later, there is another wave of attacks that hit the neighboring IRGC compound. And when I say neighboring, it is a couple of meters away. It's very close by. The second wave of strikes were captured on film. And when experts see this video, they can see that that wave of strikes was Tomahawk missiles. Out of all the warring parties that are active in Iran right now, the United States is the only state that has Tomahawk missiles. Exactly. And also experts say that usually you wouldn't use different types of weapons within the same attack.

18:24And so if you had used tomahawks in the second wave, you would have used them in the first wave. In addition to that, there is the crater that was left behind in the heart of the school. Now, some experts have analyzed that crater and they have said that that crater looks like the kind of crater that would be left behind by a tomahawk missile. Do you still see evidence of that crater? Yes. Do you see any missile fragments or have those all been removed? We haven't seen any missile fragments. And the regime did present missile fragments a few days, I think, after the attack happened. And they were fragments of a Tomahawk missile.

19:01But of course, they presented them. You know, it's not like an independent team of experts went to the site itself and found those remnants. So you have to take that with a pinch of salt as well, because it was presented by the regime. In addition to that, Reuters and CNN, they say that they've seen a preliminary version of this investigation by the U.S. And in that preliminary report, it does say that the U.S. is responsible. All of that evidence put together does point to the United States being responsible. But until the United States releases the findings of its own investigation, it is very hard to say unequivocally that they were responsible, even if all the evidence points towards them.

19:53Well, thank you, Nawal, for bringing your reporting. Thank you so much for having me, Asma. It's always a pleasure.

20:09As Nawal alluded to, we still don't have answers from the US government about what happened. And we wanted to understand why. So I called up my colleague, Tom Bateman. He covers the State Department for the BBC. When this war started, this news began to emerge that a school had been hit in Minab and a large number of children killed in what looked like an absolutely devastating incident. And obviously the Iranians were talking about this as state media was starting to show what had happened. and there was nothing on the US military's social media feeds about that. And when I looked, I think it was the following morning on their website for any kind of statement, it simply said, this incident is under investigation.

20:49The day the war started. And not just the first day, I mean, the first few hours. And that's another point, I think, which is really significant about this, because remember that this war began in the daytime. time. And the reasons for that, we assume, are because that's when the Israelis and the Americans had intelligence of the whereabouts of the supreme leader, which was the starting point that they killed him. And I put that to Marco Rubio at one point, it wasn't this reckless. Because if you were trying to mitigate civilian harm, you would start military action usually during the night. That's why wars often start, these kind of aerial campaigns often start at nighttime.

21:24Tom, I want to pause and understand the timeline. When did you begin to hear a recognition from the Trump administration about what had actually happened and what was their initial response? The very, very first response was from memory from U.S. Central Command's press office. And there was just a one line written statement where they had said this incident is under investigation. And I also asked Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, I believe that was the Monday, you know, the war started on a Saturday. Yes. Can you tell us what you know, Mr Secretary, or the administration knows, about the strike on a building in southern Iran that the Iranians are saying was a school, reports of large numbers of civilians, including children killed?

22:05I've seen those reports. I would refer you, not because I'm not trying to answer your question, but I don't want to get it wrong. The Department of War would be investigating that, if that was our strike, and I would refer your question to them. He said, you know, this is an issue for the Pentagon, that the US would never target civilians. Are there indications this was an American missile? Well, clearly, the United States would not deliberately target a school. I asked Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon during the first week. Can you give us an update on what the administration knows, what you know now about the reported strike on a girls' school in southern Iran on Saturday?

22:40All I know, all I can say is that we're investigating that. We, of course, never target civilian targets, but we're taking a look at investigating that. And that's when I got the response, we're investigating that. And I pushed again and said... Just on the basis that with the information you would have, your reconnaissance abilities, ability to gather information, I mean, it's several days on now. So is there any clarity on whose munition this was? We're investigating it. Thank you.

23:12Here we are, several months later. What's the status of those investigations and have we gotten any answers? Well, what we know is that there was an internal initial probe by the Pentagon that has not been made public, but the top lines of it leaked around the time that found that investigators believe this was likely the result of a US strike, but that they would continue investigating to gather more information. We're nearly five months on now. Yes. And we still are none the wiser as to where that investigation is going, when it will be released. Now, the other element to this is that President Trump has been asked multiple times now about the Manab strike.