The US-Israeli axis began its war on Iran at 7 am Tehran time on 28 February by firing missiles killing the country’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei at his Tehran home. Members of his family along with several high-ranking officials were also on the premises.
The airstrikes continued outside the capital and across Iran including targeting the cities of Qom, Kermanshah, Isfahan, and Karaj.
At 10:45 am in the remote southern Iranian city of Minab, a Tomahawk cruise missile tore through the Shajareh-Tayyebeh Girls’ Primary School that was packed with school children. A second missile struck the school yard seconds later. A third attack followed.
Few survived the lethal high-explosive war heads that struck the school multiple times in a triple strike. More than 180 people including 168 students and their teachers were killed that morning. The students were aged from seven to 12 years old.
At first, the US denied responsibility, blaming the Iranians. But as evidence emerged of US liability, US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth announced in early March that an investigation was underway.
Calls for accountability by rights groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, whose investigations found the US to be in violation of international law, fell on deaf ears. So have the UN Human Rights Council’s calls for an investigation on 27 March.
Allegations of war crimes by the US and Israel in Iran have only intensified since then, as Operation Epic Fury enters its second month with a record number of strikes against civilian infrastructure in a serious breach of international law.
At the onset of the war on 2 March, Hegseth vowed to undermine the fundamental protections of international humanitarian law. There would be “no stupid rules of engagement”, “no politically correct wars”, and “no nation-building quagmire”, he proclaimed.
This and statements that followed from US President Donald Trump have defined the rhetoric of Operation Epic Fury, increasingly described by legal scholars and rights groups as signalling the intention to commit war crimes.
Trump has threatened to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Age” if it does not agree to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. He has continued over the course of the past week to issue similar statements, vowing to “knock out every single thing they have”.
He has threatened to bomb bridges, electric power plants, and oil and energy infrastructure and to take Iran’s oil, seizing strategic assets like Kharg island — its primary crude oil export hub — indicating that next phase of the war might shift to the backbone of civilian life.
Under the Geneva Conventions, attacking civilian infrastructure in wartime is heavily restricted. Targeting infrastructure to pressure a population or government resembles what legal scholars call collective punishment, prohibited under international law.
On Easter Monday, Trump revelled in giving orders to the US military to strike Iran’s newly constructed bridge, the B1, which connects Tehran to the western city of Karj. He said the strikes came in response to what he claimed to be Tehran’s refusal to reach an agreement in ongoing negotiations that the Iranians have denied taking part in.
He dismissed concerns that bombing civilian infrastructure like power plants amounts to a war crime. “I’m not worried about it because they are animals,” Trump said in reference to the Iranian people.
As Trump amplifies his apocalyptic rhetoric, the US-Israeli axis has already been bombing multiple civilian sites in Iran, causing significant damage to people from all walks of life throughout the course of the war.
The Iranian authorities say that more than 30 schools have been affected by the strikes. At least 77 healthcare facilities, including 10 hospitals, have been impacted.
Large-scale damage has been reported across multiple cities in Iran including residential districts in Tehran, Sanandaj, and Maragheh. According to the Iranian Red Crescent Society, 20,000 civilian structures, including at least 16,000 residential units, have been affected by the US-Israeli strikes.
The Iranian authorities and international reports indicate over 2,076 to 3,500 deaths have taken place, with over 26,500 injured, since the war on Iran began.
The war, launched under the banner of changing the Islamic republic’s regime, has expanded to include Iranian culture, history, education, and way of life.
Last week, the UN cultural agency UNESCO issued a warning over the fate of World Heritage Sites in Iran, citing damage to the UNESCO-protected Qajar-era Golestan Palace in Tehran, the 17th-century Chehel Sotoun Palace in Isfahan, the late 8th-cenutry Masjed-e Jame Mosque in the same city, and the prehistoric sites of the Khorramabad Valley.
The head of Tehran city council’s heritage committee, Ahmad Alavi, said that US-Israeli airstrikes had damaged at least 120 culturally or historically significant sites across the country since the start of the war.
Iran is home to 29 UNESCO-listed sites.
On 2 April, the US and Israel bombed Iran’s prestigious Sharif University of Technology in Tehran and seriously damaged its engineering departments and institutes for nanoscience and environmental science, along with its computer systems.
A few days earlier, a missile struck the plasma and laser research lab at the Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran. Earlier barrages, including collateral damage from strikes on nearby military installations, hit the Iran University of Science and Technology (IUST), also in Tehran, the Ilam University of Medical Sciences, and the Isfahan University of Technology.
In mid-March, explosions destroyed the Iranian Space Research Centre in Tehran and damaged a dormitory at the Persian Gulf University in Bushehr.
Sharif University has been described as an icon of modernisation and progress in Iran, being thought of the country’s MIT.
“Its alumni include the first woman to win the Fields Medal in Mathematics, Maryam Mirzakhani,” said Vali Nasr, an Iranian-American academic, referring to the most-prestigious international prize in mathematics.
“It has been a national symbol of achievement, gaining international recognition for the quality of its graduates, large numbers of whom have been admitted into the very best engineering programmes in the West. The aim of this kind of wanton destruction can only be the nation of Iran itself,” Nasr said.
US Congresswoman Yassamin Ansari, who is of Iranian descent, condemned the attack on Sharif University on her X account. The University has produced a large number of engineers who have gone on to Silicon Valley and founded some of the most successful American tech companies.
“Why are we bombing a university in a city of 10 million people?” she asked.
Tehran’s Iran University of Science and Technology (IUST), founded in 1929, was also struck on 28 March.
The Israeli-US axis has attacked facilities at the giant gas field South Pars, the grounds of the Bushehr nuclear power plant, the Mahraban International Airport in Tehran, steel companies, petrochemical complexes, the Tehran Grand Bazaar, the Baharestan Square Bazaar, public parks and a sports hall in the city of Lamerd where children were killed, according to the semi-official Tasnim News Agency.
Fresh strikes on Tuesday hit a railway bridge in Iran’s central province of Isfahan, killing two people and injuring three. The Israeli Occupation Forces said they struck eight bridges in multiple sites including Tehran, Karaj, Tabriz, Kashan and Qom.
The attacks were preceded by fresh threats from Trump who proclaimed on Truth Social that “a whole civilization will die tonight never to be brought back again,” — raising the specter of nuclear war. This prompted dozens of congressional Democrats to call for the president either to be impeached or to be removed from office via the invocation of the 25th Amendment which provides for the temporary transfer of the president’s powers and duties to the vice president.
The announcement of a two-week ceasefire between the US and Iran a few hours later did not assuage critics. “This is a threat of genocide and merits removal from office,” US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, posted on X.
“Just because a President announces he’s agreed to a two-week ceasefire moments before he threatened to commit war crimes, does not mean he is suddenly fit to serve. #25thAmendment,” posted US Representative Melanie Stansbury, a Democrat from New Mexico.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 9 April, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.
Short link: