Trump says he's unaware of evidence indicating US bombed girls' school in Iran
Four days after US President Donald Trump put the blame on Tehran for the bombing of a girls' school in Minab, Iran, he told reporters he's unaware of the mounting evidence that it was likely the result of a US air strike.
At least 165 people died in that air strike. Most were children.
"A new report says a military investigation has found it was the United States that struck the school," a reporter told the president on Wednesday, as he took questions outside the White House.
She repeated her statement a second time when he didn't appear to hear it, and asked him to respond.
"I don't know," Trump said.
An analysis of satellite images as well as photographs of residual weapons at the destruction site, carried out by The New York Times, indicated last week that the US was the most likely culprit.
The investigative outfit Bellingcat later released video of what appeared to be a Tomahawk missile - a distinctly US munition - hitting a building near the school.
At a Monday evening press conference, Trump said that "whether it’s Iran or somebody else... a Tomahawk is very generic".
The Associated Press then reported that night that an unnamed Trump administration official admitted the US very likely bombed the school, not Israel, and not Iran.
"What more do you need to do, militarily, for this operation to end?" another reporter asked Trump on Wednesday outside the White House.
"More of the same," he responded.
Unpopular war
Senate Democrats have now sent a letter to Secretary of War Pete Hegseth demanding answers.
"We write to you with grave concern," they said. "The results of this school attack are horrific. The majority of those killed in the strikes were girls between the ages of 7 and 12 years old. Neither the United States nor the Israeli Government has yet taken responsibility for this attack."
Hegseth told reporters last week that he believes this war should have "no stupid rules of engagement".
"You set the tone for US military conduct, and your recent comments send a clear message of disregard for the laws of war," Democrats wrote.
Trump's unwillingness to pull back or draw down the war on Iran has proven largely unpopular with Americans, based on separate polling conducted since 28 February by Quinnipiac University, CNN, and Drop Site News.
On Wednesday, the National Iranian American Council released the results of its own phone survey on the war with more than 500 Iranian Americans, reflecting an even division between those who oppose and support it.
In the poll, 49.3 percent of respondents said they oppose the US-Israeli war on Iran, while 48.9 percent said they support it. Another 1.8 percent said they preferred not to answer.
'This thing is a victory'
In a signal that perhaps even the most hardline conservatives and Trump loyalists want the president to end the as-yet undefined mission, Republican senator Josh Hawley told Fox News on Tuesday that he thinks the US has done enough to now claim victory against Iran, seemingly encouraging Trump to call it a day.
"You had Trump taking out the nukes back in June. Now you've had the last 10 days. Does anybody really think that these people are ever going to try to make a nuke again? What would they make it with? Charcoal?" Hawley said.
A day earlier, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt maintained that the war was, in fact, about nuclear weapons - even though Trump had branded the programme long "obliterated".
"I mean, this is an overriding success," Hawley said.
"You look at all the success that we've had in the last 10 days. I mean, this thing is a victory. I think we should be hailing our military as the heroes they are. We ought to be thanking them for their service, and we ought to be saying we've achieved our objectives here, big time."
But it's unclear what the US endgame is, and senators on Tuesday night left a closed-door briefing on the war with one conclusion: the US has no plan.
“What you hear behind closed doors is essentially what we’re hearing in the public domain, which is complete incoherence,” Senator Chris Van Hollen said after the briefing.
“It is so much worse than you thought,” said Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts senator.
“The Trump administration has no plan in Iran. This illegal war is based on lies, and it was launched without any imminent threat to our nation. Trump has not given a single clear reason for the war and has no plan to end it,” she added.
It's unclear how much longer the war could drag on. More than 1,300 Iranians have been killed thus far, Iran's ambassador to the United Nations said.
More than 43,000 US citizens have now returned home from the Middle East since 28 February, the State Department announced on Wednesday.
The agency has assumed a more robust response to panicked Americans after initially bungling the response to the war, and only putting out "shelter-in-place" warnings after the bombs began falling from all sides.
With more than a million Americans residing in the affected regions as Iran mounts retaliatory strikes against US assets, most have chosen to stay or find their own way back without US government assistance via charter flights, the State Department indicated.
This article was sourced from Middle East Eye.
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