Nearly seven months after the outbreak of the war against Iran, a heavy silence hangs over the ruins of the Shajareh Tayyebeh primary school in Minab.
Speaking at the NDTV World Summit, Ayatullah Abdul Majid Hakeem Elahi, a senior representative and diplomat for Iran, called out Washington for failing to issue an apology for the devastating February 28 strike. Iranian state reports and UN-backed investigators indicate that the twin missile attacks on the school killed 168 people, the vast majority of them children.
The tragedy has left deep, raw wounds. According to Elahi, some of the young victims' bodies remain unrecovered beneath the rubble. Families are left without graves to visit as a new academic calendar begins, reminding communities of empty desks and lost lives.
The United States and its allies have offered little closure. The Trump administration has yet to formally accept responsibility or release public findings from any internal Pentagon investigation into the Minab incident. Meanwhile, US Central Command has denied separate allegations regarding related strikes, such as a precision attack in Lamerd that left 22 civilian men and women dead.
The international community has stepped in to examine the wreckage. A UN-backed committee was dispatched to investigate the strikes, highlighting the use of Tomahawk missiles on what monitors identified as a clearly marked educational facility.
The debate also reignites uncomfortable questions about automated warfare and target verification. While early media speculation pointed toward an autonomous AI kill chain causing the strike, former CIA Director David Petraeus addressed the summit with a different perspective. He argued that human judgment remains the primary driver behind military strikes, even when assisted by target-recognition software.
"That was a human judgment," Petraeus noted, acknowledging that mistakes happen in modern conflicts across the Middle East and Ukraine.
Yet, for the families in Minab, technical explanations offer cold comfort. Accountability requires more than acknowledging errors in targeting software. Without an official apology or transparent accounting from Washington, the tragedy remains an open sore in a bitter regional war, leaving grieving parents waiting for answers that may never come.
