UN investigators say US likely committed war crimes in Iran

0:00Support for Here and Now Anytime comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink software, to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at mathworks.com. WBOR Podcasts, Boston. The unit within the Pentagon that was tasked with civilian protection was dismantled, that, you know, this is the results that we're seeing. A UN fact-finding mission says the U.S. recklessly killed civilians in Iran.

0:48It's Thursday, September 17th, and this is Here and Now, Anytime from NPR and WBUR. I'm Chris Bentley.

0:57Today on the show, House Speaker Mike Johnson called a recess about two weeks earlier than Congress originally planned. Not that there's much going on, after all. What got done and what got tabled in just a few minutes. Also, clinical trials using LSD to treat psychiatric conditions like anxiety and depression are yielding results. Potentially because you're rewiring neural pathways and connections that the effects might be longer lasting per dose than, say, a traditional antidepressant. But getting a drug on the market might still be a long trip. More on that in about 15 minutes.

1:43First, though, human rights experts at the United Nations said they have reasonable grounds to believe the United States committed war crimes in Iran. On the first day of the U.S. and Israel's war against Iran, airstrikes on a school in the city of Minab killed at least 168 civilians, most of them girls less than 12 years old. The new report says the U.S. targeted that school, acting recklessly and not just out of negligence. Negar Mortazavi with the Center for International policy, told Peter O'Dowd more about the findings. So let's remember, this is the opening of the war, one of the first attacks on the first target list.

2:25This is even before the Iranians start retaliating or shooting back. So we're not talking about heat of the war, fog of war, anything. This is the initial beginning of the war. U.S. tomahawks, more than one hit the school in two intervals. So what we also hear from reporting on the ground is that a bunch of people first get killed and the school administrators contact some parents to come and collect their children and on their way another tomahawk attack so parents arrive thinking their kids were alive and they find more of them dead 150 something people staff and children and now the finding um is is basically saying that the school itself was the target and it wasn't a military compound around it.

3:08And it was, you know, it's open source, available data that can show that this was in fact a school. It had been a school for almost a decade. A reporter asked President Trump about the school strike back in June. Let's listen to that. Can you now say whether you will hold anyone in your administration accountable for the strike on a school that killed more than 100 children on the first day of the war? No, if it if it was a fault. And as you know, that's under investigation. It's such a strange question to be asked at this state. It's talking about a long time ago, but nobody did that on purpose.

3:46Okay, so the president says nobody did that on purpose. The administration, we should also say, has not released any findings from the Pentagon investigation and haven't responded to this report specifically. Is this something that the United States will eventually have to reckon with? I mean, let's use the words of the president. It was such a long time ago. Why isn't the Pentagon report coming out? Where is the investigation? And now these, you know, we've also had media, U.S. media, U.K. media with direct access to the site and a lot of evidence coming out of what actually happened. So there's definitely been no accountability on the U.S.

4:22There's also been questions asked by the Congress of military commanders, and it's been deflected. But yes, I mean, what the report says, regardless of intent or no intent, that this is what the UN says, indiscriminate attack. So if you have basically gross negligence for civilian casualties, that can in itself become a war crime. It doesn't necessarily have to have intent. And the casualty has just been so high. I believe it's one of the deadliest U.S. attacks in the Middle East in decades. These human rights investigators also reported on Iran itself and found that Iranian state security forces were killing people at a staggering scale and that Iran's government was committing crimes against humanity and gross human rights violations.

5:07We've reported on this as well. Did anything surprise you about these allegations against Iran in the report? No, this also goes back to protests in January, December, January, just before the war opened in February. And again, the findings correspond with the reporting on the ground, how so many civilians were killed in those protests. The Iranian government itself has put out over 3 ,000 names of people killed, most of them civilian, also hundreds of security forces during those protests. But it really goes hand in hand. And it also speaks to the complexity of the mission of of this group that basically has to investigate both sides for different events during a war and how each side is giving them limited access.

5:53And it has made their work so, so difficult, but it's also made it so crucial and important. And I think both sides of the finding are important to to be looked at in parallel. So the work was done by a U.N. commission. It's not binding. So I guess the final question to you is whether we should expect anything to come of this. I don't know. I mean, this is the nature of human rights work, right? Part of it is just putting the information out there for the public, for the world body. But we've also seen a deterioration, if not complete disregard for international law in the region, in these wars, especially in the past two, three years.

6:32Also, the situation in Gaza, the killings in Lebanon and now in Iran. I just don't know how any government would pay attention to this, but for the U.S. to be complicit and, you know, really a departure even from how war is conducted, the disregard for civilians. And we know also, again, from U.S. media reporting that the unit within the Pentagon that was tasked with civilian protection, meaning the people who would come and double check your target to make sure civilians are not going to be harmed or that the collateral is not going to be high or against U.S. code of conduct for wars, that unit within the Pentagon was dismantled by this secretary.

7:10and so that, you know, this is the results that we're seeing. And this is, it's not just a school, it was also a sports complex and just recently a wedding was hit in Iran. All right. Negar Murtazavi, senior fellow with the Center for International Policy, host of the Iran podcast. Thanks, as always. Thanks, Peter.

7:33Coming up next, the House of Representatives is heading home and will not be back in session until after the midterm elections. what did they get done and what do they have to circle back on? Peter has more on that in just a minute.

8:01The House of Representatives is heading home early and won't be back in Washington until after the midterms. Speaker Mike Johnson canceled the last two working weeks of September and cut this week short after lawmakers passed a bipartisan sanctions bill against Russia. NPR congressional reporter Sam Greenglass is still working. Sam, come on in. Welcome. Hey there. So House members have worked seven days since their summer recess. Why did Speaker Johnson send lawmakers home early? So some lawmakers say Johnson wanted to avoid an impeachment vote against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that would otherwise been forced onto the floor this week.

8:41Now that won't happen until after the midterms, though this is how Johnson explained the early exit. The House has done its work. This House has been the second most productive in terms of legislation in the history of the institutions in 1789. It's time for our members to go home to their districts and make their case to the American people to go and explain all the great things we've done. Yeah, and now that claim about this being the second most productive Congress, it is misleading, I would say. Most of those bills are not going to become law. Yeah, that got my attention, too. Republican Congressman Ralph Norman says the Speaker has canceled 63 voting days in the past two years.

9:20Is that usual? I think it is fair to say the House has been absent for a lot of this year. This week, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries basically accused Johnson of, you know, allowing Congress to relinquish its role as a co-equal branch of government. What are Republicans doing? They're running away from their responsibilities here on Capitol Hill, and they're running away from their constituents at home. At the same time, there is this hunger for Congress to do something about urgent topics like the high cost of living, like artificial intelligence. Before leaving town, the House did send the Senate a bill that aims to shield ratepayers from energy costs related to data centers.

10:04But there is still a desire for more, and that is clearly not going to happen right now. Right. And to give lawmakers credit, the House did pass a sanctions bill against Russia. It was named after the late Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, which, of course, this was a big issue for him. What's in that bill and how bipartisan was the vote? Yeah, so it was bipartisan, but it did expose some splits within both parties. This package will target the officials, the companies, the banks that are helping fund Russia's war in Ukraine. And it also gives the president authority to slap new tariffs on countries that buy oil and gas from Russia.

10:37That's something that concerned many Democrats who worried that Trump will now have new avenues to levy any kind of tariffs. And then, of course, you know, some Republicans have also soured on American support for Ukraine. And that's where we could see some of these divisions. Sam, you were talking about data centers. Democrats were also calling for the House to regulate AI because AI leaders, as we know, have all been, well, not all of them, but many of them have been saying to slow down. What's the latest on that front? Yeah, I mean, there's definitely a debate about how much should be done and how quickly.

11:09Democrats tend to argue for swift and sweeping action. and Republicans like Speaker Mike Johnson are pushing back on that. To give you a sense, though, of what to expect in the near term, here's what Republican Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana said this week. Congress isn't going to do that anytime soon. That's not going to happen. Right now, Congress can't pass gas. Okay. There you have it. That's an honest assessment, I guess. All right. NPR congressional reporter Sam Greenglass, thanks so much. No problem. Coming up, a significant step forward for psychedelics in medicine.

11:50Stick around. Dropping acid can open your mind. That's not just hippie wisdom. Science is showing the psychedelic drug can at least temporarily remap your brain. But harnessing the power of LSD for clinical psychology? That's a work in progress. Elaine Chen is a reporter for STAT, which covers health and medicine. She tells Peter O'Dowd drug companies are getting closer to putting LSD treatments on the market. Yeah, it seems like we're getting pretty close. So this week, a company called Dephinium Therapeutics announced results from a large trial showing that its LSD drug helped relieve anxiety for patients.

12:35And this was actually its second positive study. It had already reported a positive study earlier this year. So with these two studies in hand, it will soon try to seek approval with the FDA. Well, that sounds like a big deal because if it gets approval, it would be the first time a psychedelic drug got the green light for anxiety. Lots of companies are looking at psychedelics. How big of a shift is this in the medical field? Yeah, I mean, psychedelics traditionally have been pretty stigmatized. You know, they've been banned. But we're now seeing a big wave of companies developing psychedelics, and not just for anxiety, but also for depression, PTSD.

13:17We could soon see these treatments all come to the market if they get FDA approval. And they could potentially be a really attractive option for patients because they're thought to help patients pretty quickly once patients take the treatment. Whereas for traditional antidepressants, it can take weeks for benefits to kick in. Right. So how does LSD work on anxiety? So I think the idea of how psychedelics in general might be helping with depression and anxiety is that they essentially help rewire or form new neural connections. So essentially allowing us to think in new and different ways. And some people say this might help better address some of the root causes of depression or anxiety versus just treating the symptoms.

14:05but I think there's still a lot more research that we need to do there to understand all of that. And what's the process like? How would you take this medication? So for this specifically, this is a pill, so you would take it orally, but because of the hallucinogenic effects, the expectation is that once it's available in the real world, patients would have to go into a specialized clinic. they would have to be monitored by clinicians as they take the tablet and as they experience these effects. With LSD, the effects can be pretty long lasting. So they could be in the clinic for up to eight hours.

14:44So it is a time consuming process. So there's a question of whether patients would want to go through that with this therapy. Yeah, lots to learn. And as you said, I mean, LSD, it has a certain reputation, it causes hallucinations. Do we know anything about side effects and whether those benefits you were talking about may be permanent. So far, at least with this trial that we just talked about, it seems like the company said side effects were mostly mild or moderate. And the most common ones were on the day of receiving the therapy and they were illusion, nausea, headache. And then as far as how long lasting the effects are, it's kind of hard to tell because these studies are only for a limited amount of time.

15:29I think the idea is that potentially because you're rewiring neural pathways and connections that the effects might be longer lasting per dose than say a traditional antidepressant. But I think there's still a lot more research that needs to be done. Elaine Chen, a reporter for STAT. Thank you. Thank you.

15:55That's it for Here and Now. Anytime today, this podcast comes from NPR and WBUR Boston. Today's stories were produced by Joel Ryan, James Mastromarino, and Jessica Carissa. Our editors were Todd Munt, Micaela Rodriguez, and Michael Scotto. Technical direction from Caleb Green and Matt Reed. Our theme music is by Mike Moschetto, Max Liebman, and me, Chris Bentley. Our digital producers are Allison Hagen and Grace Griffin. And the executive producer of Here and Now is Alan Price. Thanks for listening. We'll be back with you tomorrow.