Many Senate Republicans say they want answers on whether the U.S. struck a girls’ school in Iran, killing about 175 people, most of them children. But the lawmakers seem satisfied with waiting for the Trump administration to produce those answers rather than publicly pressing them.
“Oversight is good,” Sen. James Lankford said. “But again, we’re in the middle of a military operation now. The questions are reasonable questions. The timing and the standing up and doing a public hearing while our troops are in the field, saying, ‘You guys are shooting at schoolgirls,’ when they’re actually defending our families — I think it’s just the wrong way to do that.”
Some Republicans took it even further. Sen. Lindsey Graham, a top cheerleader for the war, said he does not support public hearings on civilian casualties or an independent investigation into the strike on the girls’ school.
“No, I’m not worried about that right now,” Graham said. “I’m sorry anybody died. I’m not taking the Iranian bait and listening to them.”
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He added that if the school was struck by mistake, “these things happen in war.”
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The death toll from the Iran war continues to rise and the conflict shows little sign of ending soon. Strikes have hit not only military targets but also critical infrastructure like freshwater desalination plants and energy facilities, raising new concerns in Washington about the risks to civilians.
The Trump administration says U.S. forces do not deliberately target civilian sites and that the school strike is still under review. Trump said over the weekend that he believed Iran could be responsible for bombing the school.
But a preliminary U.S. assessment reportedly found that American forces were “likely” responsible for the strike. Separately, open-source analysts reviewing video and satellite imagery have said the weapon used appeared consistent with the U.S. Tomahawk cruise missile. The school is located near an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps facility that was targeted during the opening wave of strikes, according to investigators.
Trump said on Monday that “Iran has some Tomahawks,” though there is no evidence for that.
At the White House on Tuesday, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the administration was still waiting on the Pentagon’s findings and would not go beyond them for now, criticizing the media for writing about the school strikes.
Trump “has said he’ll accept the conclusion of that investigation, and frankly, we’re not going to be harassed by The New York Times, who’s been putting out a lot of articles on this, making claims that have just not been verified by the Department of War, to quickly wrap up this investigation because The New York Times is calling on us to do so,” she said.
Republicans on Capitol Hill said they’re waiting to see what the Department of Defense says.
“I think it’s the right thing to do.” Sen. Josh Hawley said of the investigation. “I await the results of that.”
Sen. Mike Rounds also said he was waiting for a “complete report.” He said he would rather get information in a classified setting than a public hearing: “I’d rather get classified ’cause I get a lot more information.”
Lankford said he has many questions about what happened at the school: “Was that the target? Was it an errant missile?”
“It could be a mistake. We want to know to make sure that doesn’t happen again,” Lankford said. “We don’t target civilian locations. That’s not what we do.”
The strike has also prompted calls for an independent investigation. United Nations human rights officials and several Democratic lawmakers have urged for a transparent probe into what happened.
Some Republicans were cautiously open to public hearings.
“I think you will see more public hearings on it,” Sen. John Hoeven said. “But I think we do have to be careful to make sure that we are supporting our warriors and understanding their safety and those things as well.”
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