If this turns out to be true, which seems increasingly likely day by day, this will be the humanitarian price against which the rest of the campaign will be measured. The US will have ceded much of the moral high ground they claimed in avenging the slaughter of innocent protesters.
I hope you're right, and one day we don't read 20 or 30 years from now the biography of a terrorist, and it starts out with their experience being the sibling of a child injured at one of these schools.
The IRGC's strategy in this conflict has been to blow up civilian targets in nearly all nations surrounding it.
It appears the IRGC has chosen civilian targets (eg: high rise apartments, airports, oil fields) on purpose, but if not, then they have such poor technology that their strikes are random.
Killing people in 11 nations to put pressure on the two nations that actually attacked you is a good demonstration of the Iranian regime's morals.
If the USA or Israel bombed this school, it clearly was an accident, since the only party it benefits is the Iranian regime.
Although the UAE and everyone else Iran has attacked may not have directly attacked Iran, they are hosting the American infrastructure making the attacks possible.
I can understand why Iran considers most gulf states complicit.
I get the feeling AI will be blamed for this, but I would not rule out the hypothesis that this was done intentionally in order to incite Iran to do something that bolsters support for the US regime’s actions. They desperately need domestic political support for this war and right now even the hardcore MAGA people are against it.
Reporting from the CBC mentioned that the school was located within an area surrounded by other military buildings. The building housing the school was used for military purposes in the past.
I think it's more likely that the US was going off of outdated intelligence.
"It can be said with a degree of confidence that, in 2013, the site was used exclusively as a military barracks with a strict security character, as there was no indication of an independent civilian use of any part of the complex.
But this changed radically in 2016. Satellite images dated September 6, 2016 capture the main turning point, when new internal walls were created and built, fully and tightly separating the school building area from the rest of the military block."
If they work with intelligence data older than 10 years, then this would still account to gross negligence, possibly counting as a war crime. But misstakes happen and they did used AI for target tracking.
But the other interpretation is more dark. Because it was not just some school, but a school where the children of the IRGC go, the elite of the system. And Trump said he does not want a regime change, but rather someone from the current system who just bows to US demands. So the threat of killing all the leadership, anyone could be next - but also the threat to kill also their children and familiy until they surrender.
To quote Hegseth:
"no stupid rules of engagement,” “no politically correct wars,” and “no nation-building quagmire.”
Threatening to kill also their families makes sense with this kind of language and logic. At some point you will find someone who values the life of his family higher than that of the nation and religion.
"The other thing with the terrorists is you have to take out their families, when you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families. They care about their lives, don’t kid yourself. When they say they don’t care about their lives, you have to take out their families,” Trump said.
During the past week, in a series of interviews and events, Trump has articulated a loose, but expansive set of principles that, if enacted, would mark a fundamental shift in U.S. foreign policy from the limits put in place by Democratic President Barack Obama and the Republican-led Congress. In addition to arguing in favor of reinstating waterboarding, a technique that mimics the sensation of drowning, and "much more than that," Trump has advocated the killing of suspected terrorists' wives and children, which appears in violation of international law.
Agreed with others here...and updating intel for primary targets is customary. Which obviously didn't happen here. The targeting cycle and the F2T2 cycle, dynamic targeting loops (probably) should have brought the latest intel about the school to light.
As for whether it was AI - the US DOD Ethic's first tenent is Responsible - personnel remain responsible...
Many similar incidents occurred in Ukraine, where Russia targeted apartment blocks that were built on the former site of some sort of military building that was demolished decades ago.
The ultimate hubris is launching a multi million dollar missile to kill civilians because you couldn’t be bothered to check Google street view (or whatever).
What people don’t seem to understand is the word “targeted”.
They see some obviously civilian target in ruins with screaming parents outside and they have an instant visceral emotional reaction: “What kind of monster would do something like this on purpose!?”
Practically nobody targets civilian building with expensive precision munitions! They’re expensive! There’s limited supply! Targets are chosen to maximise the military effect.
The problem is that the victims and journalists have “boots on the ground”. They’re right there and can clearly see the civilian nature of the target with their own eyes.
The person doing the targeting from som bunker thousands of miles away can see only blurry rectangles on an outdated map, has sparse intelligence reports, and targets coordinates. They’re not walking up to the missile like it’s some sort of intelligent war animal and whispering “kill civilians!” in its ear.
Similarly, they’re not on the ground standing outside the civilian target waving the missile in with light sticks like some airport tarmac staff.
I repeat: they’re thousands of miles away and have to target hundreds of buildings that all look the same-ish from space and aren’t magically labelled by God as “no longer valid under the Geneva conventions” or whatever.
I’m not saying that this makes war good or in any way ethical, but you can see how a mistake is made that doesn’t require cartoonish evil people to explain.
>Practically nobody targets civilian building with expensive precision munitions! They’re expensive! There’s limited supply! Targets are chosen to maximise the military effect.
We're not dealing with a rational or competent military chain of command. We're dealing with people who believe they're bringing about the Biblical Second Coming and that rules of engagement are "woke." These are literally cartoonishly evil people. They probably chose targets by asking Grok.
> I think it's more likely that the US was going off of outdated intelligence.
While Israel has enough intelligence to track where the Ayatollah is hidden away after the initial strikes on Iran. Does that sound believable to you? Either Israel and USA are pisspoor at coordinating intelligence, or Israel wilfully let the US attack the place and take the flak for it.
I do think there is a strong possibility the people in charge in the US government believe an Iran state sponsored terrorism attack would be a political benefit to them. Such things boost support for the sitting President, and could also give political cover for additional authoritarian acts to help them retain power. Would they do the school attack on purpose? Maybe? But for sure they keep the war going until they generate the response they are looking for...
In the moment before war is initiated, before a strike is launched against a country, the leaders considering war must immediately assume they are likely to destroy a school full of children some point.
It's a really warped mind that could think the best way to build domestic war support would be to blow up a girls' school, but frankly i haven't seen anything from the u.s. government that makes it sound implausible.
I think a tragic mistake like this was foreseeable (in a vague sense), but I highly doubt that anyone intentionally bombed an elementary school full of children.
The NYT had some good reporting on this, and you can see how the mistake was made. The elementary school used to be part of the IRGC base until 2016. Then it was fenced off and made an elementary school. The “shooter” (in this case, the USA) had a duty to check that the target was currently a valid military target. This verification, if it was done at all, was clearly the problem.
I’m sure you have someone directly responsible for this mistake who is going to have a hard time living with themselves. But like I said, starting a war leads to inevitable tragedy, and I doubt the people who are indirectly responsible will ever recognize their culpability in this.
It really doesn't matter whether it was a mistake or how the mistake was made. If it were your kid's elementary school that got blown up, would you say "Oh, well, it wasn't intentional. The bad guys just had outdated intelligence. These things happen."
You're intentionally missing the point. Every time a bomb drops we're rolling the dice. Hits on civilian targets are inevitable, just like bugs are inevitable. The only solution is not to go to war at all. Don't blame the person who dropped the bomb, blame the people who ordered the bombs to be dropped.
No, I firmly believe that decades of dehumanization of Iranians in particular and Muslims in general makes this sort of "tragic mistake" desirable.
I don't think whoever was responsible for this gives many fucks about the lives of Iranians.
If a foreign power bombed anything in the US and children died people would just consider them monsters, without further considerations. No one would be pondering about faulty intel.
I refuse to launder the vileness of the aggressors here.
>but I highly doubt that anyone intentionally bombed an elementary school full of children
Hegseth said to your face "No stupid rules of engagement", "This is not a politically correct war"
These are the people who have been purposely and loudly defending Israel bombing innocent people. They genuinely believe, as they say to your face, that it is important and necessary to be brutal and extreme to win war.
Intentionally disregarding rules of engagement and protecting innocent life IS intentionally bombing that school. Civilian casualties are a reality of war and the best you can do is work your ass off to reduce them, so openly advocating for NOT doing that is intentionally killing people.
Trust me, I’m not trying to defend the leadership of the DoW. But I do believe that there is a difference between reckless indifference and actually intentionally bombing a girls school.
Both sound like war crimes to me, but the latter sounds implausible given the known facts. Let’s not redefine words like ‘intentional’ just because we are appalled. Giving something awful an “awfuller” name is not going to help.
For the same reason they deposed Maduro, control, obviously.
Your mistake is thinking they care about Iranians enough to want them dead. The reality is that they want Iran to bend the knee, at which point they'll go back to not thinking about them at all.
What is not clear is how the US received such faulty intelligence. It is also strange how such a blunder happened on day 1. Did some followed Iranian targets go hide in the school? If so, did Iran have a hand in engineering misleading intel for the US, or was it solely the US' doing?
Today a boy's school in Iran was affected by an explosion. The intelligence received by the US chronically seems troubled.
I’m afraid Israel will not hesitate from turning Iran into rubble just like what they did in Palestine.
Israel definitely has a lot of moles in Iran. They weren’t bothered to confirm whether the target is a school. US earlier tried to turn it on Iran’s failed defense launch.
I read secondhand that it was used for military purposes during the Obama years and it appears no one tagged it as now being used as a school for the past 10 years. No idea if it's correct, but it's plausible they were operating off of extremely stale intelligence.
that sounds plausible. For people not tracking, the concept of intelligence at play is "object based development". One analyst drops a label, brief synopsis, whatever, and it just sits there for the next person who comes along. The world view gets more accurate over time, but there's a recency error that's hard to measure until the probability function collapses with a measurement.
Is that true? I can imagine it's true at first, going from zero bits of information to 1, etc. But information rots over time, and eventually a collection of old information may rot faster than new information improves the world view.
Also, the overall world view isn't especially important, at least not in this case. Each element's accuracy is what's important.
Hopefully each tag is accompanied by a date, at least.
I remember being worried about James Dobson, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell back in the 90s and how they were influencing politics from a distance. Thinking that was the worst it could be. Now we have [1].
they're only pretending to be religious extremists so they will get those votes, though. just like they pretend to be everything else. when the mask comes off and they call the shots, this is who Republicans are. Guardians of Pedophiles.
I think it’s taken by greed focused extremists, they’re just trying to bide favor with some other extremist groups as their flail to maintain their power and attempt to expand it.
Is it the lack of intensive AI analysis? AI can review satellite images over time and suggest if the building is civilian or not. School activities are very obvious
That is actually a point that rarely gets brought up -- we're so concerned about the dangers of AI in warfare, we don't necessarily stop to think of where they may be able to do a better job at avoiding lethal errors.
