U.S. Tomahawk strike hit IRGC naval site beside Minab school, video shows

Video released by Iran’s semiofficial Mehr News Agency and verified by independent analysts shows a cruise missile striking a walled compound beside the Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school in Minab, southern Iran, in an attack that Iranian state media says killed between 165 and 180 people, many of them children. The footage, geolocated by Bellingcat and reviewed by The New York Times, was one of several lines of evidence that analysts and some U.S. officials say point to a U.S. Tomahawk cruise missile.

Jeffrey Lewis, a Middlebury College security expert, told NPR the weapon in the footage appears consistent with a Tomahawk cruise missile. Bellingcat noted the footage shows smoke already rising over the school as the missile struck the adjacent compound and said the Tomahawk is a weapon only the United States is known to have used in the current conflict. Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a press conference the Monday after the strike, "The first shooters at sea were Tomahawks unleashed by the United States Navy."

Satellite imagery from Planet Labs provides a narrow timeline. An image captured at 10:53 a.m. local time on the day of the strike showed no obvious damage, while imagery taken on March 4 showed seven buildings in and around the compound damaged or destroyed, according to reporting by NPR and NBC News. Journalistic reconstructions trace the targeted site to a compound that once housed an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps naval base and that in recent years had stood directly adjacent to the girls’ school, separated only by a wall.

The compound included a clinic that semiofficial Iranian news agency ISNA said the IRGC Navy opened in January 2025, and local witnesses told NBC the school had opened in 2015 on land that had been part of the former base. First responders and survivors reported a likely double-tap sequence, with a second explosion hitting people who had come to help the wounded.

Munitions analysts described the damage as consistent with penetrating, precision-guided strikes. N.R. Jenzen-Jones of Armament Research Services said satellite imagery and videos "paint a picture of multiple simultaneous or near-simultaneous strikes" on both the IRGC compound and the school and that misfiring Iranian air-defense missiles was an unlikely explanation because the pattern matches air-delivered precision munitions.

U.S. and Iranian public statements have diverged sharply. President Donald Trump told reporters, "No. In my opinion and based on what I’ve seen, that was done by Iran," adding, "They’re very inaccurate, as you know, with their munitions." Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, standing beside the president, said the Pentagon was investigating, "but the only side that targets civilians is Iran." At the same time, reporting in the Wall Street Journal cited an American official saying U.S. military investigators believe American forces were likely responsible, though no final conclusion had been reached. CNN said the White House has not ruled out a U.S. role.

The United Nations called for a swift inquiry. Volker Türk, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, said in Geneva, "We need this to happen very quickly and we need to also make sure that there is accountability as well as redress for the victims." Forensic evidence assembled so far points toward a Tomahawk strike; U.S. investigators and international observers now face the task of reconciling that technical record with public denials and providing an accountable, transparent finding on a strike that exacted a heavy toll on a school community.