CNN, citing informed sources, revealed that the US military has not yet conducted a full intelligence review of the strike that targeted a school in the Iranian city of Minab on February 28.
This comes despite the fact that more than four months have passed since the incident, which has sparked criticism within the US military establishment and in Congress regarding the way the investigation has been handled.
According to the report, the investigation into the strike remained with the US Central Command for months, while the Command did not issue an order to implement the third and final phase of the strike damage assessment, which is a comprehensive intelligence review that is a standard procedure after major military strikes, and aims to analyze satellite imagery and all relevant intelligence information to determine exactly what happened and assess the impact of the strike on the overall military operation.
The sources explained that the first two phases of the assessment were completed within a week of the strike, and confirmed that it was the American forces that hit the "Good Tree" school in Minab, which was the target of the attack.
But the third phase, which is usually carried out by analysts from the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), did not begin until early July, even though it is a key part of the mechanism for reviewing high-profile military strikes.
Meanwhile, in March the U.S. Department of Defense launched an independent investigation into the incident, which included interviews with military personnel involved in carrying out the strike. However, sources said that the results of those interviews were placed under strict restrictions within Central Command and were only made available to a limited number of officers.
The network quoted a source as saying that Central Command "closed the investigation and prevented any detailed analysis of what happened."
For his part, a U.S. Department of Defense official simply stated that "the investigation is still ongoing," without providing further details.
According to the sources, evidence began to emerge a week after the strike that US forces had mistakenly targeted the school as a result of relying on outdated intelligence that indicated the site was a naval base belonging to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.
Iranian state media had announced that the attack killed 168 children and 14 adults.
The sources believed that conducting a comprehensive intelligence review would help uncover the shortcomings that led to the use of outdated information, as well as the gaps in the Pentagon's target database.
The report noted that CNN had previously revealed that senior US military leaders ignored warnings in military databases that information regarding a number of targets inside Iran had become outdated and no longer up-to-date, yet they approved carrying out the strikes, including the one that hit the school.
The sources said that the decision to disregard those warnings was taken out of "speed," given the need to secure targets at the start of the war, and that this directly contributed to the mistake.
She added that the failure to conduct a full intelligence review in such a strike is unprecedented in US military operations.
According to one source, the Pentagon was in a "damage containment" mode, noting that senior officials at the Department of Defense and Central Command did not want a repeat of what happened about a year ago, when US media revealed a Defense Intelligence Agency assessment that concluded that US strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities had not completely destroyed their capabilities, contradicting statements made by then-US President Donald Trump.
That assessment angered the White House and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and later resulted in the dismissal of Defense Intelligence Agency Director General Jeffrey Cruz, according to the report.
The report noted that the initial version of the independent investigation was submitted to Central Command last April, but has not yet been published, which has angered US lawmakers.
About twenty Democratic senators sent a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Central Command chief Admiral Brad Cooper, demanding the release of the investigation's findings, asserting that "there is no justification for withholding an unclassified report that explains what happened, what went wrong, and what actions will be taken to prevent a recurrence."
CNN also quoted another US official as saying that the White House pressured Hegseth and Cooper to prove the success of military operations against Iran, which led them to limit the circulation of information related to the war within military and intelligence institutions.
The sources added that the Pentagon and Central Command have expanded their use of classified information classification powers to include operational data and plans that were normally circulated between different branches of the armed forces, something that some officials considered an unusual precedent.
In an interview with Fox News, Trump acknowledged that it was "possible" that outdated intelligence or a mistake by U.S. forces led to the school being targeted.
