Posted on 03/29/2026 1:05:27 PM PDT by butterdezillion
Bellingcat's analysis of the strike in Minab on Feb 28th doesn't make sense. At https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2026/03/08/video-shows-us-tomahawk-missile-strike-next-to-girls-school-in-iran/ they show a video of a Tomahawk hitting an IRGC facility. Aerial photos show the blast field for that hit and bellingcat draw a red frame around that blast field. That shows the school outside the blast zone and they also say that the Tomahawk only hit a "clinic" and an earth-covered "magazine or bunker".
The first paragraph says the video shows a Tomahawk hitting an IRGC facility.
People on Bluesky used this to claim that the Tomahawk hit the school, but this shows the hit on the IRGC facility did NOT hit the school.
Iranian state media released video footage of bombs, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6FLJ-h8WRs
The regime footage shows one view where they point out a large explosion (hitting the school), followed by 98 smaller explosions - each a significant distance from the other. Then at 1 minute they switch to a different vantage point and show the school explosion again - again, much larger than any of the other 8 explosions and significantly to the other side of the IRGC communications tower that is inside the IRGC complex. At 1:14 you can see the Tomahawk at the top of the screen and then a concise, smaller explosion on the military complex - the explosion that Bellingcat analyzed. There was not a similar Tomahawk swooping close before the school explosion.
Maybe somebody in the military can comment on the difference in the size of these blasts. 8 blasts are similar in size but the one at the school was much bigger.
I've learned that this was near the Strait of Hormuz, and it seems that Bellingcat says there was something buried there - my guess is munitions used for controlling Hormuz. The tall communications tower would also have been an important military asset. Iran had to know that the Hormuz area would be critical and would likely be hit.
The theory right now is that the US military didn't update their info when the school was created in 2014 so they didn't know the building had been converted to a school. Obviously, the military is investigating what happened.
But at https://x.com/kusha_alagband/status/2034380764301975885 an X poster named Kusha tells what one of her long-time trusted followers heard when her cousin was finally able to contact her. He is the uncle of a girl killed in Minab and said that there was still a satellite on the roof of that school and that the IRGC-aligned families did not send their kids to school that day. The "clinic" nearby still had 2 missile launchers in it. This uncle said the people in that area believe that the IRGC shot a missile using one of those launchers to hit the school.
Another x poster (at https://x.com/Farida98479017/status/2034383427961840101 ) posted video of an Iranian girl who said when she got to school the teachers acted funny so she asked what was wrong. She was told there was war but they didn't want the kids to worry. This girl and her friends tried to go to the basement to get their little brothers and take them home but the door was locked for the first time ever. The girl escaped but her younger brother was killed, trapped in the basement. If you look at that conversation I asked for a summary of the video because I don't do Instagram & couldn't see it, so a (non-verbatim) transcript is there in the replies.
Another poster on Kusha's original thread noted anomalies with the exif data, etc of the photos claimed to be the only photos of the damage from the strike. He is very skeptical of the claims - regardless of who hit the school. His post is at https://x.com/OzzyManReviews/status/2032239700057170320
I approach this subject with fear & trembling because I am not good at 3D analysis & know nothing of military operations or weapons. Also, even if we did hit that school, there being the satellite on top of it makes it a legitimate military target. I strongly doubt we would have targeted it if we knew it was a school. But the things the actual witnesses say suggest that the IRGC people knew not to send their kids to school. So the only kids killed were anti-regime kids. By the time the school was hit, the government had already told schools to send the kids home, and obviously the teachers there knew there had been strikes and yet somebody locked those little boys in the basement so nobody could get them out.
I spend quite a bit of time on x these days working to mow down the lies. The leftists ALWAYS bring up Minab to say we're the bad guys. I'd be interested to hear feedback regarding the anomalies I've mentioned - especially from military folks.
Bellingcat is controlled swamp propo from the deep state
So take that into consideration
That’s what I suspected. What was interesting to me was that their own analysis did NOT support the claim that this particular Tomahawk hit the school. Yet Bluesky used it as proof.
A lot of the sources that Grok relies on to make/debunk claims is based on Bellingcat, NYT, & Reuters. All 3 very suspect.
Do you know if there is satellite imagery that would predate the strikes and could show whether there was a satellite on the roof of the school? That’s what the original X poster was wondering.
Outside of the video, this is more evidence it wasn't a Tomahawk. The vid confirms the 'wings on the missile that hit the school did not match the Tomahawk. They did match the KH-55 cruise missile. Why would Iran lie? Rhetorical question of course.
more concise
Precise.
All Tomahawk launches have a long input targeting data points. Terrain following, DIMPIs (Desired points of impact) etc. It is easy to query any Tomahawk launch with the proper clearance. No way to hide it.
What do you know about Planet Labs and BBC Verify? Grok also relies on those.
Was in the Corps as an Intel/targeting guy after the good part of my service. There is no doubt about how a Tomahawk is targeted. There is no loss of that data either. The fact that it was a KH-11 was confirmed by the locations of the winglets on the body of the missile. I would also say we don’t target schools, especially in initial phases. The use of a protected site (schools) ain’t happening unless and until the enemy blatantly uses it for prohibited acts. Not worth it in this case.
Precise and concise. The blast was not huge and wide like the hit on the school. And the Tomahawk hit resulted in a tall plume of black smoke, unlike the gray plumes all over with the school strike. Is that just because the target was different, or does that indicate anything about the munitions used?
What video shows the wings on the missile that hit the school? I noticed that the video that Bellingcat analyzed purposely left out the strike on the school, and the Iranian regime’s video was centered on the communications tower so the missile that hit the school was outside the view.
There was something buried at the place we hit, according to Bellingcat. Makes me wonder if they know that because the digging was fresh, and what you would make of that information. Would a KH-55 cruise missile be able to hit an area a football field away, if it was fired from that “clinic” that had 2 missile launchers? Or if it’s a cruise missile would it be expected to be fired from farther away?
Thank you for your service. I felt kinda dumb asking the question after I saw the information you provided. lol
I’ve always strongly doubted that we would target a school. Supposedly some military leakers told NYT & Reuters that the preliminary finding of the investigation is that we did target the school but based on stale data that the DIA hadn’t updated when they converted the building to a school in 2014. Which would still mean we didn’t target what we knew was a school. But the propaganda war is a huge part of what we fight, and I’d like to know the truth.
My son watches a podcaster who was a targeting guy in Iraq, and he thought it suspect that the military wouldn’t immediately confirm whether it was our hit or not - given that it should be easily and quickly verifiable. Any thoughts about that?
Were you able to see the winglets on the missile that identified it as a KH-11 through imagery that isn’t publicly available?
What’s a Minab?
The KH-55 can hit where targeted. There is a vid that shows the missile that hit the school, based on the ‘wings’, it wasn’t a Tomahawk.
Minab is the place in Iran where the US military has been accused of hitting a school on the first day of strikes in Iran. It’s near the Strait of Hormuz. That accusation has been used by leftists/Islamists all over the place to call us the bad guys. But there are good reasons to suspect foul play from the Iranian regime instead.
Do you have a link for that video? That would be critical for Grok (for instance) to be alerted to, so people interested in knowing the truth could bypass the non-credible and/or Deep State sources that Grok currently relies on.
Oh.
The missile hit is available, ain’t a Tomahawk. Early in a fight, you target known sites, not a frickin school. Later if it determined the enemy is using a prohibited site you might target it. Since the target list for Iran is probably 15K, hitting a school that early probably isn’t likely.
Who cares? These were the children of IRGC enemies.
Iran uses mobile launchers and had 2 of them in the “clinic” right there. I wonder if they stored KH-55’s there so had both the missile & launcher readily available. Do you have any thoughts about whether the IRGC could have fired that missile using the launchers in the “clinic” - trying to frame the US and create propaganda that NYT, Reuters, etc would run with?
Nope, saw an analysis of it, no link, but we don’t bomb schools, one of the reasons I know the allegations are ‘Baghdad Bob’ reporting. I know it is interesting, but this type of incident is a waste of time, propaganda already disproved by video analysis.
Possible, but why? only dumbasses would believe out of the myriad targets on the list, we would go after a school.
I care because I’ve been on x and see how the leftists are using this to hate on the US military and anybody who supports the US military.
I also care because truth matters.
And I care because if the IRGC deliberately killed those kids in order to frame the US military it might help a bunch of Artesh guys (Iran’s regular military) think hard about who they will support with their weapons when the street fighting begins.
I understand your response though. It’s kind of old news already, and the left won’t listen even if we present evidence to them. Hopefully there are some average joes, though, who will realize that all Iran has is the propaganda war and their perceived ability to get useful idiots in the US to believe a lie and wreak havoc amongst Trump’s supporters through those lies.
If you only knew how many dumbasses I’ve been doing battle with on x. And for Iran, all they have left is to try to get the dumbasses to do stupid things like NO KINGS, or Joe Kent talking about stuff he had no access to, or Tucker Carlson, etc. The only way to defeat the USA is to divide us. And we’ve got a lot of dumbasses just itching to be divided from people like you, me, Hegseth, or Trump.
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