Removed: It is often said that the worst evils are committed not by monsters or sadists, but by terrifyingly ordinary people.
US “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth recently commented with disarming composure in a media interview: “The only ones who need to worry right now are the Iranians who think they are going to live.” Words spoken without hesitation, as if the prospect of death for millions were simply a strategic calculation.
In southern Iran, before the sun rises over the coast, a familiar sound travels silently through the villages: the sound of lenj boats preparing to put to sea. Their worn wooden hulls creak against the tide, the sails are slowly unfurled and the fishermen pull their ropes in the stillness of the early morning. In the south there is a saying that says: “To the lenj that does not know the sea, the first wave will break it.” For the inhabitants of our coast, the lenj is more than a boat. It is a symbol of life itself, of perseverance against the sea, against the storm, against a destiny that has rarely been kind.
I am a son of that same south, where the sea has long taught its people to face the waves. However, on the morning of February 28, an unexpected wave reached the south.
It was 10:45 in the morning. The classrooms at the Shajareh-Tayyebeh Girls’ Primary School in Minab City were filled with children. Girls between the ages of seven and 12 sat behind their desks with notebooks open before them. The rhythm of recitation and the quiet voices of learning floated through the halls.
At that very moment, thousands of miles away, inside a control room full of digital screens, a button was pressed.
A Tomahawk cruise missile, one of the world’s most precise guided weapons, was lifted from a US warship. A missile of this type is designed to attack with extraordinary precision. You can select a specific structure among many buildings and reach your target within a few meters.
That morning, their target was not a military installation.
Their goal was a girls’ primary school.
The first missile pierced the ceiling of the classrooms and the structure collapsed in on itself. Seconds later, a second missile hit the courtyard, where children who had escaped the falling debris struggled to breathe under clouds of dust. A third explosion followed and the noise of life gave way to an unbearable silence.
When the smoke finally cleared, what was left were burned textbooks scattered among broken desks, small shoes scattered on the floor, and the screams of mothers shouting their daughters’ names through the rubble.
About 170 people were killed, most of them schoolchildren, and about 100 were injured. These numbers cannot convey the human reality they represent.
This was no accident. The moment alone speaks with unequivocal clarity: 10:45 on a Saturday morning, precisely when the classrooms were full of children, in the first hours of the war. A missile capable of reaching a radius of five meters does not confuse a classroom with a military installation. Satellite images taken before and after the attack, remnants of US ammunition, and verified video recordings all point to the same conclusion.
This was not a mistake. It was a message conveyed on the first day of the war that even the most remote communities in southern Iran could become places of devastation. Its purpose was to instill terror from the beginning, to break the resolve of a people and to normalize the idea that no place, not even a classroom, is safe.
The repeated attacks on the school clearly demonstrate the deliberation and evidence of the required intent.
Minab was not an isolated tragedy. Across the country, the pattern has been repeated. Large numbers of civilians have been killed, residential neighborhoods have been reduced to rubble, shopping malls have been destroyed, medical facilities have been attacked and schools have been damaged or destroyed. Not even the buildings of the Red Crescent, an institution that stands as a universal symbol of humanitarian protection, have been spared.
These repeated attacks do not reveal a series of unfortunate errors but rather a discernible pattern. The targets are not armies on the battlefield but the structures of ordinary life itself: homes, hospitals and schools. When those places are attacked repeatedly, the intent becomes impossible to ignore.
This pattern of criminal behavior was explicitly affirmed by US President Donald Trump on March 10, when he publicly threatened the Iranian nation and its civilian infrastructure, declaring that “we will eliminate easily destructible targets that will make it virtually impossible for Iran to rebuild as a nation; death, fire and fury will reign over them.”
From the perspective of international law, what happened cannot be understood as a simple violation of the laws of war. It falls directly into a set of serious violations that international criminal justice has defined and condemned for decades. War, even in its most violent form, is not illegal. The rules governing armed conflict exist precisely to protect civilians from its horrors, and when those rules are violated, responsibility does not disappear in the fog of battle.
The foundations of modern international criminal law were laid after World War II at the International Military Tribunals in Nuremberg and Tokyo. There, the international community affirmed a principle that has since become the cornerstone of justice: those who command military power cannot evade responsibility by claiming that they simply followed orders. Authority carries a corresponding duty of accountability.
This principle has been repeatedly reaffirmed in subsequent international tribunals. At the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, in Prosecutor v Tihomir Blaskic, judges held that the deliberate destruction of educational and religious institutions during an armed conflict constitutes a war crime.
Examining the atrocities committed in the village of Ahmici, the court concluded that the destruction of the village’s mosque and school was not the result of confusion on the battlefield but part of a calculated campaign designed to terrorize the civilian population. The commander was held responsible because he had ordered the crimes or had not prevented them.
Similarly, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda demonstrated in cases such as Prosecutor v Jean-Paul Akayesu, that attacks on places where civilians seek refuge, including schools and churches, constitute serious violations of international humanitarian law. Those who take refuge in these places, particularly children, are out of combat, outside the sphere of combat and have the right to absolute protection.
These principles are codified in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Article 8(2)(b)(ix) defines as a war crime the intentional directing of attacks against buildings dedicated to education, as long as they are not military objectives. This rule reflects the fundamental principles of distinction and proportionality embodied in the Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols: war is fought against combatants, not against classrooms, hospitals or homes.
In the case of the Shajareh-Tayyebeh school in Minab, the legal issue is tragically clear. A missile designed to be precise hit a school building at the precise moment when children were present. The result was not collateral damage but a human catastrophe: more than 100 children whose voices will never again be heard in their classrooms.
International law, however, is not limited to identifying the physical act. It also examines the chain of command through which such acts become possible. In the structure of the US military, ultimate authority over military operations rests with the president as commander in chief. Trump sits at the top of that chain of command and has ultimate political and military responsibility for initiating and conducting military operations.
Immediately below him in that structure is Hegseth, who, as “secretary of war,” is the highest civilian authority within the “War Department,” responsible for the planning and execution of military operations through the military’s command hierarchy.
His own public comments reflect an unapologetic stance on violations, including his assertion that there will be no “stupid rules of engagement” or “politically correct” wars.
In international criminal law, these charges are not merely political charges; carry legal obligations. The doctrine of command responsibility states that commanders can be held criminally responsible when they order crimes and when they know, or should have known, that such crimes are being committed and fail to prevent them.
The experience of international criminal justice reveals a recurring truth. When schools, homes and hospitals are attacked repeatedly, these attacks rarely represent isolated incidents. They are part of a broader strategy: an attack on the fabric of everyday life designed to break the spirit of a people.
History remembers those patterns just as it remembers the names of those who suffered them.
In southern Iran there is a saying: “No lenj broken in a storm is truly lost; the sea eventually returns its fragments to the shore.” The memory of justice works in a very similar way. The names of Minab’s sons will also reach that shore one day.
The Iranian nation will not give up in the defense of its country or in the search for justice for the blood of its people.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.
