In a landmark new report submitted to the UN Human Rights Council, three independent human rights experts with the UN-mandated Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran have concluded there is credible evidence to hold both the United States and Iranian authorities responsible for severe, systematic violations of international law, including war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The core finding of the investigation centers on two deadly February 28, 2026 missile strikes carried out amid open conflict between the US, Israel and Iran that killed a total of at least 177 civilians, more than half of them children. The first strike targeted Shajareh Tayyebeh Primary School in the southern Iranian town of Minab, where local officials confirm 156 people lost their lives, including 120 schoolchildren. While the school sits adjacent to an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) naval facility that was also attacked that day, the mission’s experts confirmed the educational site was clearly identifiable as a civilian space, with no evidence to suggest it was repurposed for military use.
Drawing on multiple lines of evidence – including open-source media reports indicating an internal preliminary US military inquiry already found American forces responsible for the strike, and the fact that only the US deploys Tomahawk missiles, the weapon system used in the attack – the experts determined there are reasonable grounds to believe the school was an intentional target, not an accidental miss or unintended collateral damage from the strike on the IRGC complex. Survivor accounts further supported this conclusion, with multiple witnesses confirming the school was hit by two separate missile strikes. The US has not issued an immediate formal response to the report’s findings, and has not yet published the full results of its own internal investigation into the Minab incident. US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has previously stated that American forces “never target civilian targets.”
The second strike examined by the mission hit a civilian sports complex and surrounding residential neighborhood in Lamerd, also on February 28. Local records confirm 21 civilians, including seven children, were killed when Precision Strike Missiles (PrSM) dispersed a cloud of lethal tungsten pellets over the area. As with the Minab school, the experts confirmed the sports complex was a clearly marked civilian site with no indication of military use. Again, the mission found reasonable grounds to attribute the strike to the US, noting that only the US possesses PrSM technology. The US military has previously denied carrying out any strikes in Lamerd on that date and disputed claims that PrSM missiles were used.
Across both incidents, the panel concluded there are reasonable grounds to confirm the US committed the war crime of launching indiscriminate attacks that resulted in mass civilian death, injury and widespread destruction of civilian infrastructure.
Beyond the US-led strikes, the report also details the Iranian government’s violent crackdown on nationwide anti-government protests that swept the country between December 2025 and January 2026. The experts found that the repression marked a staggering, unprecedented escalation of force compared to past protest crackdowns, with lethal violence deployed across all 31 of Iran’s provinces.
Witness accounts, testimony from healthcare workers, and statements from victims’ families collected by the mission confirm that Iranian security forces positioned themselves on rooftops and other high vantage points before opening fire with assault rifles on assembled crowds. Many protesters suffered life-altering injuries, including permanent blindness, after being struck by metal shotgun pellets to the head, face and chest. As the crackdown intensified, security forces raided hospitals and other healthcare facilities, beating and arresting wounded demonstrators and detaining medical staff who provided treatment. The experts say this campaign of intimidation prevented hundreds of injured protesters from accessing life-saving medical care.
Tens of thousands of protesters detained during the unrest have been subjected to widespread torture, prolonged solitary confinement, and systematic denial of access to legal counsel, the report confirms. The panel also found that Iranian authorities have drastically ramped up the use of the death penalty against detained protesters in the months following the unrest: at least 29 men have already been executed after rushed, expedited trials on charges linked to the protests.
While the mission notes it could not independently verify the full death toll from the crackdown due to restrictions on access, it concluded the actual number of people killed is far higher than the Iranian government’s official count of 3,000 dead – a figure the government frames as mostly security force members and bystanders. The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (Hrana) has independently confirmed more than 7,000 deaths, almost all of them unarmed protesters, a number the mission says is consistent with the evidence it gathered.
Based on the systematic, widespread nature of the violence against civilian protesters, the experts concluded Iranian authorities committed crimes against humanity, including murder, arbitrary imprisonment, severe unlawful deprivation of liberty, torture, and other inhumane acts carried out as part of a coordinated attack on the country’s civilian population. Iranian officials have not yet issued a formal response to this specific finding, but have previously rejected all claims of systematic human rights violations, and have blamed the unrest on US and Israeli interference, framing protesters as “terrorists” and “rioters.”
In a closing statement released alongside the report on Thursday, the fact-finding mission warned that Iranian civilians are trapped between two competing forces carrying out gross violations of human rights: “Civilians in Iran are caught between gross human rights violations and crimes against humanity committed by their own government and the nation’s deadly conflict with the United States and Israel.”