US may have committed ‘war crimes’ in Iran: UN investigators

United Nations investigators say there are reasonable grounds to believe the United States committed war crimes during its military campaign against Iran, including in a devastating strike on a primary school.

The UN’s Independent Fact-Finding Mission points specifically to two American attacks in February, including the strike in Minab where Iranian authorities reported more than 150 people were killed.

But the report is also damning of Tehran, finding that Iranian authorities committed crimes against humanity in their violent suppression of anti-government protests.

The UN investigators examined the Minab school strike and another attack on a sports complex in Lamerd, where civilians were killed and injured.

They say there are reasonable grounds to believe the US attacks amounted to war crimes.

In practical terms, that means investigators believe the evidence they gathered provides a credible basis for the allegation and warrants further investigation and accountability.

The same mission accuses Iranian authorities of crimes against humanity in their crackdown on protesters, including killings and arbitrary detention.

The report now goes before the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, putting both Washington’s conduct of the war and Tehran’s treatment of its own population under renewed scrutiny.