The UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran reported on Sept. 17 that U.S. air operations on Feb. 28, the first day of joint U.S.-Israeli hostilities against Iran, resulted in war crimes. Lawfare agrees with the conclusions but notes the UN report gave little legal analysis, so the article supplies the legal reasoning behind the findings.
The deadliest case was the Tomahawk strike on the Shajareh Tayyebeh Primary School in Minab. The UN mission found it was an indiscriminate attack caused by a reckless failure of target verification: U.S. forces relied on outdated intelligence listing the site as an IRGC naval installation and did not check accessible open-source records showing it had become an active elementary school years earlier. Lawfare argues that proceeding on stale, unverified intelligence is not mere negligence; it is reckless disregard, making the attack indiscriminate under Additional Protocol I even though the U.S. is not a party to that treaty.
The UN report also found that a Precision Strike Missile attack on the Lamerd Sports Complex was disproportionate because a wide-area kinetic fragmentation weapon was used in a populated area. Lawfare ties both findings to customary international law and the U.S. War Crimes Act, noting that indiscriminate attacks carried out with reckless disregard have been treated as direct attacks on civilians in ICTY jurisprudence. Neither the U.S. nor Iran is a party to the Rome Statute, but the article says the criminality of such omissions is widely acknowledged as customary law. The UN report, the source notes, also convincingly establishes crimes against humanity by the Iranian government against its own population.