Diyar Güldoğan
14 July 2026•Update: 14 July 2026
By Diyar Guldogan
WASHINGTON (AA) - A group of Democratic senators is pressing the Pentagon to immediately release its findings of an investigation into a US military strike on an elementary school in Iran that killed more than 175 people, including children.
Sen. Jack Reed, ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, joined Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and 23 other senators in demanding that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and the US military’s Central Command (CENTCOM) Commander Adm. Brad Cooper make public the Pentagon’s review of the Feb. 28 strike on the Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School in Minab.
The senators said that more than four months after the strike, the administration has failed to provide Congress or the public with a full accounting of what happened, despite reports that the investigation was completed and submitted in April.
"More than four months after the strike, and after the reported submission of the investigation in April, Congress and the American people still have not received the Department’s investigation and findings," the senators wrote Monday in a letter to Hegseth and Cooper.
"There is no justification for withholding an unclassified accounting of what happened, what went wrong, and what the Department is doing to prevent recurrence," it said.
The senators also pointed to reports that strike planners relied on outdated imagery that did not show the presence of a school at the location.
"If accurate, these reported issues raise deeply troubling questions about the integrity of U.S. target development, the adequacy of target validation and vetting procedures, the interoperability of intelligence and targeting databases, the timeliness and reliability of intelligence used for lethal targeting, and the Department’s implementation of civilian harm mitigation policies," said the letter.
Last month, when US President Donald Trump was asked about the school strike report, the president said he had not seen a report about it.
"I have to wait for it to be complete,” he said. “I don't know that they're ever going to solve that problem, in terms of whose fault was it, because there were missiles flying all over the place.”
Trump said what happened was "horrible."
"But there were missiles flying all over the place, and somebody said it was our missile. Well, maybe it wasn't our missile, but I've seen nothing to lead me to believe it was. There were plenty of missiles being flown by other people," he added.
The senators urged the Pentagon to "promptly finalize the investigation" into the strike by July 20 and provide Congress with the full, unredacted findings, as well as an unclassified version that can be released to the public.
Several independent investigations concluded that the US was responsible for the widely condemned strike, citing evidence such as the US Tomahawk missile that hit the school.
