UN Experts Find Grounds to Believe U.S. Committed War Crimes in Iran Strikes

GENEVA, A United Nations fact-finding mission has found what it calls reasonable grounds to believe the United States committed war crimes during military strikes on Iran earlier this year, in findings that land three days before world leaders converge on New York for the General Assembly's high-level week.

The report, published Thursday by the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran, centres on two strikes carried out on 28 February, the opening day of what the mission describes as the U.S.-Israeli military campaign against the Islamic Republic. According to reporting by the Washington Post, which reviewed the findings, the mission concluded that the United States committed "the war crime of launching indiscriminate attacks resulting in the loss of life or injury to civilians."

The more serious of the two incidents involves the Shajareh Tayyebeh Primary School in Minab, a port city in Hormozgan province in Iran's south. The mission found that "the building of the school was the intended point of impact," according to findings cited by the Washington Times. Investigators reached that conclusion using interviews with 73 people, along with satellite imagery, photographic and video material, and input from expert organisations. According to NBC News, the pair of strikes killed at least 178 civilians, including children and women. Iranian state media have reported 168 dead from the Minab strike alone, most of them children.

The second strike examined by the mission was on Lamerd, a town roughly 250 kilometres to the northwest. The UN-backed team said 22 civilian men and women were killed there. U.S. Central Command has denied responsibility for the Lamerd strike and said it was investigating the Minab incident.

The Trump administration rejected both sets of findings. The White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly, according to the Washington Times, dismissed the report as "unserious nonsense," asserting that the Iranian government is the only party committing war crimes in the conflict. The U.S. State Department did not respond to an Associated Press request for comment before publication of the findings.

The mission, chaired by Bangladeshi jurist Sara Hossain and created by the Human Rights Council in 2022, was also explicit about Iranian conduct. The report concluded that Iranian security forces carried out killings on what it called a "staggering scale" against their own population, with the mission documenting deaths by security forces in all 31 provinces. The North East Times noted that at least 221 children were among those killed, some as young as two. The mission found that detainees faced torture and solitary confinement, and that Iran imposed a nationwide internet blackout on 8 January that lasted more than five months, which the experts described as the longest such shutdown on record.

The dual findings make the report politically awkward for Washington and Tehran alike. The mission called on both governments to halt all rights violations and to provide full reparations to victims. Neither government cooperated fully: nearly three dozen requests to Iran went unanswered, and a June request to the U.S. government for information and meetings with officials was also ignored, according to the Washington Times.

The report carries no binding legal force. But as the Washington Times noted, it "adds to international evidence gathered about crimes in the war in Iran, and could eventually be used in efforts to reach justice in international courts." That dimension gives the findings a shelf life well beyond this week's diplomatic calendar.

The timing is not incidental. The General Debate at UNGA 81 opens on 22 September under a session presided over by newly elected Assembly President Khalilur Rahman of Bangladesh, a country whose own jurist chairs the mission, and under the theme "Restoring trust, managing transformation," according to UN News. It will also be the last General Assembly high-level week opened by Secretary-General António Guterres, whose decade-long tenure ends on 31 December. The war in Iran, and what responsibility looks like in its aftermath, is now near the top of the agenda.

Sources cited:
- The Washington Post (https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2026/09/17/un-human-rights-us-iran/c25d2294-b274-11f1-92c2-5c918f4a6127_story.html)
- The Washington Times (https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2026/sep/17/un-backed-panel-cite-possible-us-war-crimes-iran-strikes/)
- NBC News / Associated Press (https://www.nbcnews.com/world/iran/un-mission-finds-grounds-believe-us-committed-war-crimes-iran-rcna598283)
- North East Times (https://northeasttimes.com/2026/09/17/un-report-cites-possible-us-war-crimes-in-iran-strikes-crimes-against-humanity/)
- UN News (https://news.un.org/en/story/2026/09/1168344)