Task: No warning – then 168 children died
But the Pentagon bombed anyway.
– There are many former hedge fund people and people who do well on TV in the decision-making process, a source tells CNN.
The mistake is said to have killed 168 children.
The bombing of the girls' school in Minab in southern Iran occurred on the first day of the war on February 28.
According to Iranian state media, 168 children and 14 teachers were killed in the attack.
The US defense headquarters, the Pentagon, has not claimed responsibility for the bombing and has not yet published the results of its own internal review.
Quickly realized its mistake
– The investigation is still ongoing, a White House spokesman tells CNN.
– But as we have said before, the US does not attack civilians.
However, the TV channel has sources who say that the Pentagon quickly realized that it had made a terrible mistake.
– They knew after a few days how the mistake was made. It was clearly old intelligence, says a source.
CNN states that the military leadership knew about the intelligence shortage in advance – but still chose to strike to save time under pressure from the White House.
The database that analysts used in search of targets to attack at the beginning of the war warned that the information on the area in Minab was old, several sources tell the TV channel.
Located on an army base
Messages that the intelligence was based on information that was several years old and needed to be re-examined and verified again were entered into the system.
Approval from a higher officer was also required for a target to be added to the attack list.
According to the old information, the girls' school was part of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps army base.
The TV channel states that satellite images from 2013 show how the current school and the Revolutionary Guard base were then located in the same area.
However, images from 2016 show that a fence separating the school from the rest of the military facility has been set up. And more recent satellite images from December 2025 show dozens of people playing in the schoolyard, writes CNN.
However, those images were not in the database used to determine the targets of the bombing on the first day of the war.
Prioritized other targets
The Pentagon was under pressure to quickly update intelligence information for thousands of potential targets after President Trump's decision to start the war.
According to CNN's sources, they chose to prioritize moving targets that could have moved since the latest intelligence was collected and those that could pose the greatest threat to American military personnel.
Many possible fixed targets - such as the army base where the school was later built - were not updated before the war broke out, a source told the television channel.
According to the sources, the tragedy could have been avoided despite this.
An analyst had previously detected changes around the army base via another digital intelligence service, but that information had not been linked to the official intelligence database.
"TV profiles in the decision-making process"
The information was also not sent up the chain of command.
Several sources told CNN that senior Pentagon officials pressured staff to quickly identify targets to attack in the immediate run-up to the war, and that the pressure continued during the weeks that the conflict was ongoing.
That put a lot of pressure on analysts at the US Central Command (CENTCOM), who were tasked with identifying suitable targets for attack.
“The Pentagon is pushing everyone to act faster. There are a lot of former hedge fund people and people who do well on TV involved in the decision-making process,” a source told CNN.
“But the leadership at CENTCOM did not resist either.”
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