Senators seek to block Hegseth travel funds over Iran strike report

The sharpest focus is the Feb. 28 strike on an elementary school in Iran’s Minab campus, next to a Revolutionary Guard base, where more than 165 people were killed. Lawmakers say the episode became a defining civilian-harm case in the war with Iran because officials preliminarily concluded the United States was responsible and that outdated intelligence likely drove the attack. The unanswered questions are basic and consequential: how the strike was approved, what intelligence was used, and why the findings have remained out of public view for months.

Sen. Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the bill “forces the Secretary to be more accountable to Congress” and is meant to stop past mistakes from being repeated. The language was folded into this year’s annual defense authorization bill, giving the Senate one of the few concrete tools it has left, control over spending, to compel disclosure from a Pentagon that has not met its reporting obligations.

The same restriction would also withhold travel funds until Hegseth turns over “unedited video” of U.S. strikes on suspected drug-trafficking boats near Venezuela. That campaign has stretched for months and, lawmakers say, has killed at least 211 people. Together, the two disclosure demands show how Congress is tying money to transparency in cases where the human toll is already high and the documentation remains incomplete.