Pentagon Officials Plan to Hold Minab School Strike Report Until After Nov. 3 Midterms, Bloomberg Reports

The Pentagon's own investigation into the strike on Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School in Minab, southern Iran, is reportedly finished. The public may not see it before Election Day.

Bloomberg reported Thursday, Oct. 15, that top Pentagon officials intend to hold the report until after the Nov. 3 midterms "at the earliest." Bloomberg's sources are people familiar with the matter who spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to discuss private deliberations. They said advisers to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have passed the plan to some Pentagon personnel.

The Pentagon has not publicly confirmed the plan in the accounts available as of today, Oct. 18. No release date has been announced.

What the report reportedly found

According to Bloomberg, the investigation found that flawed intelligence, outdated imagery and an overreliance on AI contributed to the attack. Officials told the outlet the probe has been essentially complete for months.

Preliminary findings reported in early March pointed to a Tomahawk missile and outdated targeting information.

Bloomberg's earlier investigation reported that within hours of the strike, Pentagon personnel knew the U.S. was responsible. The Trump administration has still not publicly admitted to carrying out the attack.

The toll

The war with Iran opened on the last day of February, and the school was hit in the opening wave. Numbers differ by source. Bloomberg puts the number of children killed at 123.

Minab's general prosecutor said in early April that the final death toll was 156. That figure includes 120 students (73 boys and 47 girls), 26 female teachers, seven parents, a school bus driver, a clinic technician and the unborn child of a pregnant teacher.

Drop Site News has since published an extensive account built on interviews with parents, surviving children, teachers and first responders. Jeremy Scahill of Drop Site described to NPR what firefighters told his reporters: a scene of "total apocalypse."

What the administration has said

President Trump addressed the strike in June, telling reporters: "Mistakes are made. War is nasty."

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand's office says Trump has suggested more than once that the strike was not America's fault and has blamed Iran. The administration has not accepted responsibility.

The Pentagon has not given a public reason for the timing of the report's release.

Reaction

Gillibrand, a New York Democrat who sits on the Senate Armed Services and Intelligence Committees, issued a statement Thursday. "Withholding this report until after the election is not only disgraceful, it is cowardly," she said. "We have waited months — release the report."

Her office also says Hegseth has cut civilian harm mitigation and response staff at the combatant commands by more than 90 percent. That figure comes from her office and has not been independently confirmed here.

The criticism is not only a Democratic one. Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, introduced a resolution last month to impeach Hegseth. One article in it ties the school strike to what Massie describes as Hegseth's dismantling of civilian-protection safeguards. The resolution says the school was struck after Hegseth "sought to repeal congressionally mandated civilian-protection requirements," removed the senior-most Judge Advocates General responsible for independent legal oversight, and "publicly denigrated legal restraints on military force as obstacles to 'maximum lethality.'"

Ryan Costello, policy director at the National Iranian American Council, called the refusal to come clean "a shameful exercise to dodge accountability for a horrific war crime" and warned it risks repeating the errors. He pointed to later strikes, including a home on Qeshm Island and a wedding party in Kuhestak that killed five people, two of them children. Whether those strikes violated the laws of war is Costello's characterization, not a finding by any court or investigative body.

Policy analyst Brian Finucane mocked the reported timing, saying the Pentagon doesn't "want to remind voters before the midterms" of the school strike.

The open question

The motive for the delay rests on anonymous sourcing and on critics' interpretations. The Pentagon has not said why the report would wait, and the administration has not rebutted the political-timing charge on the record in the accounts available.

What is documented is the timeline. The strike happened Feb. 28. The probe is reportedly done. The elections are 16 days away. Whether Hegseth releases the findings before Nov. 3, or Congress forces the issue, is the next test.