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Iran school bombing: grounds to believe US was behind atrocity, UN finds (https://www.theguardian.com)

351 points by hebelehubele 3 days ago | 305 comments | View on ycombinator

Wildgoose 2 days ago |

Seeing as it was a "double tap" it was clearly a deliberate target. Bomb the school, wait until officers from the nearby base with kids at the school arrive to try and rescue their daughters and hit it again. Clearly a war crime, possibly using Israeli targeting information, which clouds which State is ultimately responsible.

skeledrew 3 days ago |

So... what's gonna be done about it? The recent precedent has been to invade the country, grab the president and try them.

albatross79 2 days ago |

Arguing whether it was intentional or a mistake is stupid. It doesn't matter, the enormity of it should shake everyone involved. That it doesn't is the real tell of what kind of people these are.

pmkary 3 days ago |

Yes because normal people have tomahawks they can shoot to schools in their basements, and it required a court to find out who was responsible: United States, Dr. Evil, or the Cookie Monster?

boesboes 3 days ago |

That was never a question right?

undefined 2 days ago |

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r_lee 3 days ago |

let me guess, the end result of this will be "strong condemnation"?

Nevaeh 2 days ago |

Their families should receive an apology and compensation if it can be done covertly with a neutral third party I suppose. Even if it take decades. One day.

For now I can only process it better knowing that The Red Cross Society of China allocated $200,000 to the Iranian Red Crescent Society specifically as special funds for the bereaved parents who can apply for it. Each family basically receive about an entire year of earnings, which isn't much but at least it is something to help cover funeral costs.

nojvek 2 days ago |

“Are we the baddies?”

The guy who campaigned on ending wars sure loves killing children.

ProllyInfamous 2 days ago |

IIRC the guy who blew up his Tesla truck (in front of Trump Tower) was a drone pilot involved in this (or a similar) mass-casualty bombing. Perhaps he was leadership – but the released parts of his manifesto... were revealing about his opinion on US-motives.

rug_sweep.gif

pvaldes 2 days ago |

Ok. Everybody knew that. The first war crimes were free. Now what?

Vote me again so I can keep bombing more girls tomorrow?

Without action this is just a barely veiled attempt to appease the furious voters just before an election. All talk, no real will to fix this mess.

MomsAVoxell 2 days ago |

Why is this flagged?

undefined 3 days ago |

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davidguetta 2 days ago |

Was it not a former miiltary building wrongly designated by claude as a target ?

shevy-java 3 days ago |

GPS spies on everyone. Flock cameras too. Meta-spy glasses continue that trend.

Now officials tell the public "we used old maps" when bombing a school with kids. That's a deliberate lie. It wastes our time to even want to lend any credibility to wanting to believe such a lie.

CommanderData 3 days ago |

Whenever I read the US or Israel wanting to free Iran from it's "horrible regime", remember this incident plus the hospitals targeted during their attack.

sschueller 3 days ago |

I hope it was not deliberate but it may have been. Blowing up the kids of military generals is a strategic move when you ignore the "rules of war".

hmokiguess 2 days ago |

I'm gonna guess they will blame AI and say we need more AI safety, bonus if they claim it was an open weight model.

jmyeet 2 days ago |

One great thing about the Internet is it lets you see how other people live, if you want to go looking for it. Think about all the things you want in your life: a house to live in, a car to drive, children (maybe), your children being able to get an education safely, good health, time with family and friends and so on.

The point is that Iranian families want all of those things too. Because they're people just like you are. You can see videos of ordinary Iranians going to the market, going to work, having family over, eating a meal together and so on. It saddens and frightens me how easy it seems to dehumanize other people and basically be OK with killing them en masse.

Now I want you to think about what you'd do if you sent your 11 year old daughter to school one day and some foreign government double tapped that school with 2 Tomahawk missiles killing almost 200 people, most of them children.

We kind of do know because it's basically what happened after 9/11. We spent $8T+ on a 20 year war to kill over a million people in vengeance that really didn't do anything else. Remember that Afghanistan offered to hand bin Laden over after 9/11 [1].

The Trump administration tried (badly) lying about what happened. First it never happened. Second, it wasn't us. But nobody else has Tomahawk missiles so that was never going to work.

The only question is where the targeting information came from and what verification was done. I am not convinced that Israel didn't supply this information so the US military would commit atrocities to keep them in a war that Israel had desperately wanted for decades. Every president since Reagan had been begged by Israeli PMs to invade Iran. All of them refused. It's widely believed that Netanyahu threatened to use nukes if Obama wouldn't do it. Obama called his bluff. Until Trump. And here we are.

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/14/afghanistan.te...

gcanyon 3 days ago |

> failed to adequately verify the information before launching the strike

I'm so proud to be an American today :-(

MetroWind 1 day ago |

I mean... of course it's the US. Who else could it be?

hn_submit 2 days ago |

These are baseless and misleading accusations. In WWII many tens of thousands of civilians died because of erroneous bombings and no one ever got accused of "war crimes" over them.

In a war mistakes are made and people will die as a result. But that doesn't mean they're war crimes. Blaming the U.S. whilst leaving Iran alone, which blatantly attacks civilian infrastructure, makes the U.N. look biased and nefarious.

BrunoDCDO 2 days ago |

Water is wet

cineticdaffodil 2 days ago |

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codedump 2 days ago |

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brewcejener 2 days ago |

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blueoranges 2 days ago |

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cumshitpiss 3 days ago |

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chrocni380 3 days ago |

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SV_BubbleTime 2 days ago |

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ukblewis 2 days ago |

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theplumber 2 days ago |

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jackmott42 3 days ago |

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ianaye 2 days ago |

We all know this happened. What I find hilarious in the discussion here is that everyone also knows it was caused by AI replacing humans on the battlefield, but because so many here have deeply conflicted interests they pretend they don’t know and act as though some human somewhere did this intentionally. Greed really corrupts the dialog around military use of AI.

BariumBlue 3 days ago |

Wasn't it right next to a military base, and previously used as part of that military base? And therefore a reasonable part of the targeting list that should've gotten more scrutiny but just didn't?

This feels like someone wanted to slander the US military actions, could only find one unambiguously negative thing, so then they pontificated on that.

ReptileMan 3 days ago |

ECHR, UN and ECJ will find any and everything as crime against humanity so it is best to ignore them and make your own judgement. It is like asking ADL if something is antisemitism or SPLC if something is racism - the answer will always be yes, so why bother.