<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The U.S. military is investigating reports from Iranian state media that an American airstrike on Tuesday hit a house in southern Iran where a wedding was taking place.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">"We’re aware of the reports, which originated from Iranian state media, and we are looking into them," Cmdr. Tim Hawkins, a U.S. Central Command spokesman, told the <em>Washington Examiner</em>. "The U.S. military never targets civilians, unlike the IRGC," he added, referring to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Iranian state media reported that at least four people at the event were killed in that specific strike, though they may have an incentive to exaggerate or claim U.S. attacks resulted in civilian casualties.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The U.S. military is still investigating whether it was responsible for a strike that occurred on February 28, which killed more than 150 people, a majority of whom were schoolgirls. Following that strike, the military initiated a formal investigation led by an outside investigating officer, but the results have not yet been shared publicly.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Adm. Brad Cooper, the commander of U.S. Central Command, told lawmakers during a House Armed Services Committee hearing in May that the investigation was "coming to the end" but did not provide a time frame for its conclusion. He agreed to publish an unclassified version of the findings.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Cooper stated that it is a "very complex investigation" because the "school itself is located on an active IRGC cruise missile base, so it’s more complex than the average strike." </p>
<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img alt="Rescue workers and residents search through the rubble in the aftermath of a strike on a primary school in Minab, Iran" class="wp-image-4709682" height="466" src="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Iran-Minab-strike.jpg" width="700" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Rescue workers and residents search through the rubble in the aftermath of a strike on a primary school in Minab, Iran, on Saturday, February 28, 2026. (Abbas Zakeri/Mehr News Agency via AP)</figcaption></figure>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The U.S. military conducted more than 13,000 strikes in Iran, officials said at the time President Donald Trump announced the April ceasefire. The War Department stopped publicly updating the number of strikes it conducted in Iran but has carried out several rounds of strikes since then.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The military does make targeting mistakes sometimes. In August, the Pentagon submitted its Section 1057 report, an annual tally of suspected civilian harm in U.S. operations, to Congress, detailing three primary incidents in 2025. In those three strikes, which occurred during Operation Rough Rider, in which U.S. forces were targeting the Yemen-based Houthis, 153 civilians were killed, and 243 more were injured.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The deadliest of the three strikes occurred on April 17, 2025, at Ras Isa Port in Yemen, where 80 civilians were killed and 171 others were injured.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">U.S. troops also carried out an airstrike in Afghanistan on August 29, 2021, only hours before American forces were set to leave the country and end the two-decade conflict. The strike came at a time of heightened threat, especially days after a terrorist with the Islamic State group’s Afghanistan affiliate carried out a suicide attack killing 13 U.S. service members and about 160 Afghan civilians, but the target was not a terrorist intent on carrying out a follow-up attack, as U.S. personnel believed.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Instead, the military targeted and killed an aid worker named Zemari Ahmadi and several members of his family. A subsequent investigation, led by Air Force Lt. Gen. Sami Said, found that the botched strike did not violate any laws, though he made recommendations to avoid confirmation bias while searching for indications of threats.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Almost exactly a year after that strike in Afghanistan, the Pentagon released its Civilian Mitigation and Response Action Plan, which included a series of actions designed to mitigate future civilian harm through a reinforcing framework with the proper response in place in case it does occur.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">A Pentagon inspector general report from May found that the Pentagon had made progress implementing the policy changes in the CHMR-AP, but in February 2025, the acting undersecretary of war for policy and the Army secretary proposed major changes to the implementation strategy. It is not clear, per the report, what War Secretary Pete Hegseth will decide about the alternative strategy, but entities within the building stopped funding the CHMR data management platform, stopped holding meetings for the steering committee, and many of the personnel were reassigned.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Elbridge Colby, the undersecretary of war for policy, "partially agreed and stated that reviews of the [Civilian Protection Center of Excellence] and related policy were underway. He did not agree with the need to develop and implement a plan to ensure compliance with statutory requirements," the report said.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong><a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/in_focus/4689927/iran-war-pressure-pentagon-procurement-transformation-to-meet-the-‘1939-moment’" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">SIX-MONTH IRAN WAR PUTS PRESSURE ON THE PENTAGON’S PROCUREMENT TRANSFORMATION TO MEET THE ‘1939 MOMENT’</a></strong></p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Several Democrats have expressed concerns about the reductions made in the civilian harm mitigation effort and whether it could have contributed to the Minab school strike.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Hegseth, for his part, has long rebuked "stupid rules of engagement" dating back to prior to his time as secretary. In his address to senior military leaders last year in Quantico, Virginia, he said, "We untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt, and kill the enemies of our country. No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement, just common sense, maximum lethality, and authority for warfighters."</p>