Although US President Donald Trump accused the Iranian regime of being behind the attack, the truth gradually came to light. The investigative group Bellingcat obtained an authentic video of a Tomahawk cruise missile landing near a school. The Iranian media then showed fragments that were clearly from a tomahawk.
At the same time, the United States is the only country in the conflict that deployed these cruise missiles.
In the end, it became clear that an old map was apparently used in the attack, where the school was still run as part of the naval base. However, the building was separated from it and the new publicly available maps showed it.
The tragedy could have been avoided
Due to the high number of civilian casualties, the United States began implementing procedures in 2022 to reduce their number. In 2022, the plan for Civilian Damage Reduction and Response (CHMR) was adopted, and a year later, the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence (CPCE) was established, the aim of which was to minimize the number of civilian casualties. He was in charge of creating and implementing relevant procedures and correcting the selection of targets.
A team was assigned to each headquarters, which was supposed to take care of minimizing the impact of attacks on civilians. First, they were assigned to the CENTCOM command, under which the Middle East region falls, under the African command and under the Joint Special Operations Command JSOC.
The CHMR came up with procedures for planning the attacks themselves in detail in order to reduce the risk of civilian casualties, to monitor in real time the presence of civilians at the site of the planned attack and to conduct an in-depth risk analysis. Given the established procedures, there was great hope that the school would not become the target of an attack.
Former members of the CHMR state for the Defense One server that, as part of the canceled measures to limit civilian damage, work on plans to protect civilians would begin several months before the attack, when orders came to develop plans for a possible campaign against Iran.
Members of CHMR would start creating a map of the so-called civilian environment, where civilian objects and the movement of civilians are recorded. They would also update the list of buildings not to be affected. With a high probability, a school would be among them, even though the building was part of the base of the naval forces of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards in 2013, before it was separated from it.
“You want whoever pushes the button that launches the tomahawk to be really confident that when they push the button, they’re not going to hit school kids,” said an unnamed CHMR official. If this were to happen, lessons would be learned immediately and the rules would be adjusted so that it would not happen again.
