Pentagon probe finds AI, outdated intelligence contributed to deadly Iran school strike

A Pentagon investigation has found that faulty intelligence, outdated satellite imagery and an overreliance on artificial intelligence contributed to a US missile strike on an elementary school in Iran's Minab in February, according to officials involved in the internal probe cited by Bloomberg.

Two Tomahawk missiles struck the Shajarah Tayyebeh Elementary School on February 28, killing more than 150 people, including at least 123 children, Bloomberg reported. Some Pentagon personnel reportedly knew within hours that the United States was responsible.

The strike took place at the beginning of the US war with Iran and has emerged as one of the deadliest civilian incidents involving American military operations in decades. The Pentagon began investigating the incident in March.

The internal investigation has not been publicly released. Pentagon officials have continued to say that the incident remains under investigation, while a senior US administration official told Bloomberg that the United States does not target civilians.

Rush to finalise targets

According to officials involved in the investigation, the Trump administration's decision to launch an overwhelming aerial assault at the start of the conflict significantly compressed the time available to identify and verify targets.

More than 1,000 Iranian targets were struck during the first 24 hours of the war. Work that would normally have taken hours or even weeks was condensed into a much shorter period as military planners prepared the initial target lists.

The Minab site had been classified in US intelligence databases as an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps facility. However, the location had undergone significant changes over the years and was operating openly as a school.

Bloomberg's review found that satellite imagery showed walls and entrances separating the school from the former military compound. Changes to the site were visible years before the strike, with one US intelligence analyst reportedly flagging modifications as early as 2019. Those observations, however, were recorded in a system that was not connected to the primary military intelligence database used for targeting.

The Washington Post had earlier reported that the school was on a US target list and may have been mistakenly identified as a military site. It also reported that the targeting process relied on Palantir's Maven Smart System, which combines surveillance, sensor, logistical and intelligence data to assist military decision-making.

AI system became part of the targeting chain

Investigators said some US Central Command personnel relied too heavily on artificial intelligence, particularly Palantir's Maven Smart System.

Maven is designed to bring together large volumes of information and help military personnel analyse potential targets. Bloomberg reported that the system was at the centre of the targeting process for the Minab site and that officials expected it to identify stale or contradictory information in the underlying intelligence.

However, Palantir said it was not responsible for the underlying data or for identifying intelligence deficiencies, and there was no evidence that its software itself was at fault for the strike.

After the attack, Palantir developed additional tools to re-examine intelligence and flag inconsistencies, inaccuracies and information that could disqualify a proposed target, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The internal investigation found that the Minab site moved through the military's multi-stage targeting process, known as the "kill chain". Intelligence analysts, imagery specialists, targeteers, lawyers, commanders and launch crews are traditionally involved in the process.

Investigators said that, ahead of the Iran operation, Maven helped compress parts of the target-selection process from hours to minutes. The Minab site, still classified as an IRGC facility, ultimately appeared among the recommended targets for the first day of the operation.

Civilian protection safeguards had been reduced

The investigation also examined changes to the Pentagon's civilian-harm mitigation structure.

According to officials cited by Bloomberg, civilian-protection teams across the Pentagon had been sharply reduced, with staffing falling by roughly 90% to fewer than 20 personnel. At CENTCOM, the team was reduced from 10 members to one.

No member of the civilian-harm mitigation team reviewed the Minab site before the strike, according to officials involved in the investigation.

Such reviews were not formally mandatory, but had become a routine part of targeting in recent years. They can involve examining the civilian environment around a target, assessing the likely presence of non-combatants and identifying ways to reduce civilian casualties.

The Biden administration had expanded such civilian-harm safeguards after a 2021 US drone strike in Kabul killed 10 civilians after an aid worker was mistakenly identified as a threat.

UN mission says strike may constitute a war crime

The Pentagon findings came as a UN-backed fact-finding mission concluded that there were reasonable grounds to believe the United States committed war crimes during two February airstrikes in Iran.

The mission examined the Minab school strike and a separate US attack in Lamerd, where a strike dispersed clouds of tungsten pellets over a sports complex and residential area, killing 22 people.

The UN mission said there were reasonable grounds to believe the US had launched indiscriminate attacks resulting in civilian deaths, injuries and damage to civilian objects. It said the United States had failed to take all feasible measures to verify that the Minab school was a military target.

The Minab strike killed more than 150 people according to the UN-related findings, while Bloomberg's Pentagon investigation reported that at least 123 children were among those killed. The UN findings are not legally binding, but could form part of evidence considered in future accountability proceedings.

The United States has not publicly accepted responsibility for the school strike. President Donald Trump has previously questioned whether the US could be conclusively identified as responsible, while the Pentagon has continued to cite its investigation.

Questions remain over accountability

The Pentagon's full investigation has not been released publicly, although officials familiar with the inquiry said it was largely complete.

The incident has also drawn scrutiny from US lawmakers. More than 120 Democratic members of the House reportedly wrote to Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth in March seeking information about the Minab strike and the role of AI, including Maven, in identifying the site as a target.

The investigation has raised broader questions about the use of AI in military targeting, particularly when systems rely on outdated or inaccurate underlying intelligence. Bloomberg reported that the Minab case was not attributed to a single failure, but to a chain of decisions and missed opportunities to identify that the site had become a civilian school.