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The Minab School Video: How Geolocation Put a U.S. Tomahawk Next to a Girls' School

Evidence rating: CONFIRMED. Four independent teams (Bellingcat, the New York Times, the Associated Press, and CNN) geolocated the same three-second video to the Revolutionary Guard naval compound beside the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls' primary school in Minab, and identified the missile as a Tomahawk, a weapon only the United States fired in this war.

This is the most important piece of verified video in the whole war, and it is not a video of soldiers. It is a video of an American cruise missile, on the first day, landing beside a school full of girls. It matters to this section for one reason: it shows what happens when the public is told one thing and the footage shows another. On the day the school was hit, Americans were told Iran did it. The geolocated video says otherwise.

What happened on February 28, 2026​

February 28, 2026 was the first day of the joint U.S.–Israeli war on Iran (the Pentagon called its part Operation Epic Fury). That morning the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls' primary school in Minab, a town in Hormozgan province in southern Iran, was destroyed. The school sat next to a naval compound of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), separated from it by a wall. The girls were about seven to twelve years old.

The number of dead is reported differently in each outlet, and this page keeps them apart rather than picking one: 175 in the New York Times, "more than 168" in the Guardian, "over 165" in the AP and the Times of Israel, "more than 170" in Mario Nawfal's relay of NBC News. In April, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Chris Van Hollen wrote to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth describing "A missile strike on a girls' elementary school in Minab, Iran that killed 175 children and teachers – likely the deadliest child casualty event by American forces since 1991" (Warren and Van Hollen letter, April 19, 2026).

Round one: "it was Iran's own rocket"​

Within hours, a post claimed: "Footage shows whatever hit the school was a failed rocket launch from IRGC, it wasn't Israel or US." It reached about 11,000 likes and more than 750,000 views.

GeoConfirmed, a volunteer geolocation group, answered the same evening with coordinates anyone can paste into a map:

"Left picture is the school in Minab, Hormozgan Province, Iran 27.109834, 57.084748 ... Right picture is from a misfire in Zanjan, Zanjan Province, Iran Point of view - 36.684951, 48.488164. 'There is no possible way this could have hit the school, 1,300 kilometers in the opposite direction.'" (GeoConfirmed on X, February 28, 2026, 1.4 million views)

GeoConfirmed credited the Israeli open-source analyst Tal Hagin and a second geolocator for the find. The follow-up in the same thread: "An image from Zanjan falsely used to claim that a misfired IRGC ballistic missile was what hit the Minab girls school."

Ireland's The Journal traced a second "Iran did it" clip, captioned "WATCH: Missile debris falling in Qatar" before it was relabeled as Minab. "The signs, buildings, and road layouts seen in the video do not match the area near the school in Minab, they are an exact match for the Al Wakra Industrial Area south of Doha." The Journal also found that the "Iranian admission" being shared was a screenshot from a Persian Telegram channel that "is not associated with the regime," while "official Iranian sources have consistently blamed the US and Israel for the explosion" (The Journal, March 5, 2026).

So the first wave of "footage" in this war was footage from the wrong city and the wrong country, pushed to move the blame off the United States.

Round two: the Tomahawk video​

On Sunday, March 8, Iran's Mehr News Agency released a three-second clip filmed from a construction site opposite the IRGC compound. It shows a long, winged missile diving into the base, with smoke already rising from the direction of the school.

Bellingcat, the Netherlands-based investigative group, geolocated it first by matching "buildings, water towers, trees and roads from the video with satellite images of the Minab site," as the Guardian described the method (Guardian, March 10, 2026). The New York Times visual investigations team matched a worn dirt path, grass, and debris piles to satellite imagery and wrote:

"The evidence contradicts President Trump's claim that Iran was responsible for a strike at the school that killed 175 people, most of them children." ... "The U.S. military is the only force involved in the conflict that uses Tomahawk missiles." (New York Times, March 8, 2026)

The Times of Israel, an Israeli English-language paper, carried the same finding the next day: "The investigative group Bellingcat says newly released video 'appears to contradict' US President Donald Trump's claim that Iran was responsible for an explosion at an Iranian school that killed over 165 people," and "Trevor Ball, a Bellingcat researcher, geolocated the video to a site near the school, something also done by the AP" (Times of Israel, March 9, 2026).

The people who identified the missile​

  • Trevor Ball, a former U.S. Army explosive ordnance disposal technician who works with Bellingcat, identified the munition as a Tomahawk. Chris Cobb-Smith of Chiron Resources agreed, according to the New York Times.
  • Giancarlo Fiorella, Bellingcat's director of research, on Canadian television: "we can determine with 100% certainty that the video was recorded in this area of Minab in Iran," and "the United States did bomb that site again in the immediate vicinity of the school on the day that the school was bombed" because "the missile that you see in the video, we were able to determine through visual analysis is a US Tomahawk cruise missile." On the idea that it was an Iranian cruise missile: "we've determined that that cannot be the case" (CTV, March 9, 2026).
  • N.R. Jenzen-Jones, director of Armament Research Services: "The video shows a Tomahawk missile striking a target. Given the belligerents, that indicates it is a US strike, as Israel is not known to possess Tomahawk missiles." And: "the munition in question is clearly not an Iranian Soumar missile: the Soumar has a distinctive external engine located towards the rear, on the underside of the munition" (Guardian, March 9, 2026).
  • Jeffrey Lewis, the nonproliferation specialist, is named with Bellingcat and Jenzen-Jones in Mario Nawfal's summary of NBC's reporting (Mario Nawfal on X, March 10, 2026).

The AP added the ship. "U.S. Central Command has acknowledged using Tomahawk missiles in this war and even released a photo of the USS Spruance, part of the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier group located within range of the school, firing a Tomahawk missile on Feb. 28" (Los Angeles Times / AP, March 9, 2026). PolitiFact noted that Japan, the United Kingdom, Australia and the Netherlands also own Tomahawks, "but they're not involved in the war" (PolitiFact, March 11, 2026).

The fragments​

Photographs of missile pieces in front of the school were checked by Snopes, which rated them "True" with context. "Investigative outlet Bellingcat confirmed the images matched downed U.S.-made Tomahawk missile fragments used in earlier conflicts." Snopes found manufacturing labels naming Globe Motors of Dayton, Ohio (a company it says the Department of Defense has paid "more than $23 million since 2007") and Ball Aerospace in Colorado, and "no signs the photos were digitally edited or generated using artificial intelligence software." Snopes also noted "It is unclear precisely where the remnants photographed in front of the school were recovered" (Snopes, March 13, 2026).

Two waves, not one​

A video analysis posted April 2 examined two more clips released a week later by Iran's foreign ministry. One synchronized with the first. The third "could be geolocated to the same area in Minab," but its shadows put it earlier: "the area appears to have been hit with not one, but two waves of strikes" (video analysis, April 2, 2026). Survivors and rescuers described the school being struck twice in quick succession, as a widely shared summary recounted (post on X, March 9, 2026). That is the pattern known as a "double tap."

What officials said​

  • The President first blamed Iran. As one account summarized a later remark, Trump suggested Iran had stolen a U.S. missile and bombed itself (post on X, March 11, 2026). That wording was not checked against a transcript, but the New York Times, the Guardian, and the Times of Israel all report that his claim was that Iran was responsible.
  • Officials in private. NBC News reported, as Mario Nawfal relayed it, that "Officials privately told Congress last week that the U.S. was targeting that exact area, and that Israel was not responsible."
  • Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, March 10: "Where things happen that need to be investigated, we will investigate" (as quoted by PolitiFact). The Journal reported that he "refused to provide any updates on whether the US was responsible for the blast."
  • Iran's state media blamed the United States and Israel from the first day (IRIB on X).

What this video teaches about the rest of the war​

The public was told, first, that the school was hit by Iran's own misfire. The pictures offered as proof came from Zanjan and from Qatar. Then the President said Iran was responsible. Then a three-second clip, checked by four independent teams, showed an American Tomahawk landing beside the school, and officials had already told Congress privately that the U.S. was targeting that area. The same pattern (a public line, a private reality, and footage that settles it) runs through the ground-troops story: "no boots on the ground," then the April rescue raid inside Iran, then Pentagon plans for weeks of ground operations.

Go deeper​

Status: Donald Trump, Pete Hegseth, Trevor Ball, Giancarlo Fiorella, N.R. Jenzen-Jones, Jeffrey Lewis, Chris Cobb-Smith, Tal Hagin, Elizabeth Warren, and Chris Van Hollen are alive. The responsibility findings above are those of the named outlets and researchers; U.S. officials said the strike was under investigation.

Sources​

Last Updated: 2026-09-26

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