The senior Pentagon officer overseeing combat operations in Iran told the Senate on Thursday that the destruction of an Iranian school, which Iranian officials said killed 175 people, may have been caused by a U.S. bomb and was the only civilian casualty incident that he was aware of in a campaign of more than 13,600 strikes.
Admiral Brad Cooper’s testimony suggested that he believed that the U.S. military’s record since that Feb. 28 strike had been near perfect, a fact belied by investigations from human rights groups and news media organizations. Senators greeted Admiral Cooper’s claims with deep skepticism, and a human rights group that investigates civilian casualties in war called it “ridiculous.”
The U.S. military still has not taken responsibility for the school strike, which Admiral Cooper, the head of U.S. Central Command, said remained under investigation.
The New York Times has verified damage to 22 schools and 17 health care facilities. The Iranian Red Crescent Society, the country’s primary humanitarian relief organization, said on April 2 that at least 763 schools and 316 health care facilities had been damaged or destroyed in the war.
At least 1,700 Iranian civilians have been killed in the war, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency.
“How do you explain the publicly available information that 22 schools have been hit and multiple hospitals?” asked Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, citing the Times report.
“There’s no way we can corroborate that,” Admiral Cooper replied. “No indication of that whatsoever.”
In his testimony, Admiral Cooper described the prevention of civilian deaths on the battlefield as “a matter that I’m passionate about.” But he also conceded that his staff had not investigated any of the incidents documented by The Times or human rights groups.
“The idea that they only are looking into one is pretty ridiculous,” said Emily Tripp, the executive director of Airwars, a British nonprofit.
Airwars has recorded at least 300 civilian casualty events in Iran, many of which resulted from large bombs being dropped on heavily populated areas.
“Why are they not looking into any of those?” Ms. Tripp asked. “We know they have the team and the infrastructure to do so.”
The Pentagon’s policy requires an initial review of every reported civilian casualty to determine if the U.S. military was active in the area. “It would be patently absurd to suggest the U.S. is only looking into one strike, given the thousands of reported civilian casualties,” said Annie Shiel, the U.S. director of the Center for Civilians in Conflict.
Capt. Tim Hawkins, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command, said other preliminary reviews of suspected civilian casualty incidents would occur, but he did not give details.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has terminated dozens of positions across the Pentagon and the major U.S. combatant commands that focus on civilian deaths. Most of these positions worked under the umbrella of the Pentagon’s Civilian Harm Mitigation Response office, which was created by Lloyd J. Austin III, Mr. Hegseth’s predecessor.
Admiral Cooper said that the team focused on civilian casualties at U.S. Central Command had shrunk from 10 officers to just one over the past year.
Most of those officers were reassigned to new positions within the command and continue to play a role in preventing civilian deaths, he said. But it was unclear from Admiral Cooper’s testimony what role they were playing.
Some investigations, previously led by the team at U.S. Central Command, have been offloaded to a skeleton staff working out of the Pentagon, military officials said, discussing the sensitive work on the condition of anonymity.
Admiral Cooper told the lawmakers that his staff had been proactive. “Our staff specifically warned the Iranian people more than 100 times about the threat of them being used as human shields,” he said. “I personally warned the Iranian people.”
And he pledged to be transparent and release the results of the command’s investigation into the Feb. 28 strike on the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school. In early March, an investigation made a preliminary determination that the errant strike was the result of a targeting mistake by the U.S. military, which was conducting strikes on an adjacent Iranian base.
It’s unclear why, more than two months after the strike, military officials have not released any formal statements on the apparent mistake.
“It was frankly pretty clear from the very beginning that we were probably responsible,” William H. McRaven, a retired admiral and former commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, said this week. “It seems to be taking longer than I would think. But again, not being in the inner circle, I can’t tell you whether this is too long or not.”
Senator Mark Kelly, Democrat of Arizona, pressed Admiral Cooper on Thursday to put back the officers moved from Civilian Harm Mitigation Response.
“If you were to find out that there was an error in the targeting process, would you reinstate some of those people that were removed from that team?” Senator Kelly asked.
Admiral Cooper was noncommittal.
“Sir, it’s a hypothetical,” he replied. “We’ll just see what the investigation says.”
Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.
