A United Nations fact-finding mission said Thursday there are reasonable grounds to believe the United States committed war crimes in two strikes on the first day of the Iran war, one of them on a girls’ school in Minab. The White House called the council behind the report “unserious nonsense.” The same report finds Iran guilty of crimes against humanity against its own people. The Church has a settled teaching about what a nation owes when it is accused, and it applies to both capitals in the same words.
The News Story
A United Nations fact-finding mission reported Thursday that it found reasonable grounds to believe the United States committed war crimes in two airstrikes in southern Iran on February 28, 2026, the opening day of what the Associated Press calls the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran. The same report accuses Iran’s government of crimes against humanity against its own citizens.
The mission was created in 2022 by the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva and is chaired by Sara Hossain, a jurist from Bangladesh. Its members are independent experts, and its findings carry no binding legal force. The experts were scheduled to present the report to the 47-member council on Monday. AP reported that the findings could eventually feed efforts to bring cases in international courts.
The two strikes killed at least 178 civilians by the mission’s count. One involved Tomahawk cruise missiles that struck the Shajareh Tayyebeh school in Minab, a city on Iran’s southern coast. Iranian state media put the death toll there at 168, most of them children. Iranian health officials and state media cited by CBS News said about 170 died, most of them schoolgirls between 7 and 12 years old. The experts concluded that “the building of the school was the intended point of impact,” and they rejected the explanation that the damage came from an errant strike or from an attack on a Revolutionary Guard compound next door. Fox News reported that local authorities described two strikes on the building roughly 40 minutes apart.
The second strike hit Lamerd, in Fars province, the same day. Precision Strike Missiles scattered tungsten pellets across what the report called a “clearly identifiable sports complex and residential area,” killing 22 civilian men and women. U.S. Central Command has denied responsibility for Lamerd.
The administration rejected the findings. White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said the Human Rights Council has “accomplished nothing for human rights while spouting unserious nonsense for decades,” and said the only party in the conflict that has committed war crimes is the Iranian government. The State Department said it does not credit the report, pointing to the administration’s withdrawal from the council. AP reported that the State Department did not immediately respond to its own request for comment.
The Pentagon opened a command investigation into the Minab strike earlier this year, with Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth assigning a general officer from outside Central Command to lead it. No results have been released, and the administration has not directly accepted responsibility. A person briefed on a preliminary U.S. assessment told CBS News that American forces were “likely” responsible for the school strike but did not target it deliberately, possibly because dated intelligence still listed the area as part of an Iranian military installation.
On Iran, the mission found killings by state security forces on a “staggering scale,” torture of detainees held without legal counsel, and expanded use of the death penalty, with more than 70 people at imminent risk of execution. It called on both governments to halt violations and provide full reparations to victims. The report drew on interviews with 73 people inside and outside Iran, satellite imagery, and photographic and video material. Nearly three dozen requests for information sent to Tehran went unanswered, as did requests sent to Washington in June. [1]
Catholic Social Teaching Analysis
Our analysis begins by looking at the White House. Its spokeswoman said the Human Rights Council has “accomplished nothing for human rights while spouting unserious nonsense for decades.” I’ll grant part of that. The council has seated governments with appalling records, and the Church herself keeps her distance when international bodies “address problems incorrectly.” [2] Nobody owes a UN committee deference just because it is a UN committee. But the administration’s statement went further than criticism. It refused the question. Two strikes, 178 dead by the mission’s count, most of them girls between 7 and 12, and the official answer is that the only war crimes in this conflict belong to the other side. The Church has a name for that move, and she has been warning against it since before the United Nations existed.
The Force Of Law Or The Law Of Force
The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church lays out how the Church understands the community of nations. It teaches that there are “universal principles which are prior to and superior to the internal law of States,” and it lists them: the unity of the human race, the equal dignity of every people, the rejection of war as a way to settle disputes, the duty to cooperate for the common good, and fidelity to agreements freely made. Then it adds the warning that reads like a headline this week. Nations must keep their word “in order to avoid ‘temptation to appeal to the law of force rather than to the force of law.’” [3]
That phrase is the whole argument in 12 words. The law of force says the strong decide what happened and who answers for it. The force of law says the strong answer like everyone else. The Church picks the second without hesitation. Two paragraphs later, the Compendium says why: “As in the internal life of individual States … a system of private vendetta and reprisal has given way to the rule of law, so too a similar step forward is now urgently needed in the international community.” And then, flatly, “international law must ensure that the law of the more powerful does not prevail.” [4]
You can argue the Human Rights Council is the wrong body. You can argue the mission’s methods were thin (73 interviews, satellite imagery, unanswered letters to both capitals). What you can’t do, on the Church’s terms, is answer a finding of 178 civilian dead with a press release about the council’s reputation. That’s vendetta logic wearing a suit. The whole point of law among nations is that it binds the party that could ignore it.
Who Answers For A School
The Catechism is blunt about what happens inside a war. “Actions deliberately contrary to the law of nations and to its universal principles are crimes, as are the orders that command such actions. Blind obedience does not suffice to excuse those who carry them out.” [5] The Compendium repeats it in the language of the professional soldier: “Military personnel remain fully responsible for the acts they commit in violation of the rights of individuals and peoples, or of the norms of international humanitarian law. Such acts cannot be justified by claiming obedience to the orders of superiors.” [6]
Both texts hang on one word, deliberately, and that word is exactly what’s in dispute. The UN mission says the school “was the intended point of impact.” A person briefed on the preliminary U.S. assessment told CBS the strike was “likely” American but not aimed at the school, possibly because dated intelligence still tagged the area as a military site. Those are different moral facts. Deliberate targeting of a school is a crime in the plain sense the Catechism means. Killing 168 children because nobody refreshed a target list is negligence on a scale that still has to be answered for. Somebody built that target folder. Somebody signed off on two Tomahawks 40 minutes apart.
So the Church’s demand is simple, and it applies to Washington the same way it applies to Tehran. “Those responsible for such crimes must answer for them before justice.” [7] The Compendium says this in the paragraph that praises the International Criminal Court, and it notes the Magisterium “has not failed to encourage this initiative time and again.” The Church wants a court, a record, and a name. She has wanted it since Nuremberg.
Here’s what makes this week’s story sting for an American Catholic. The Pentagon did open an investigation into Minab, and Secretary Hegseth put a general officer from outside Central Command in charge of it, which is the right instinct. That was months ago. Nothing has been released. The State Department says it doesn’t credit the UN report, and CENTCOM denies Lamerd outright. You end up with a government that has quietly accepted it probably hit the school, formally refuses the body that says so, and hasn’t published its own findings either. That is the law of force in slow motion: the powerful party decides when, whether, and how it will be examined.
And the same report accuses Iran of crimes against humanity against its own citizens, of killings “on a staggering scale,” of torture, and of more than 70 people at imminent risk of execution. The mission asked both governments to stop and to make full reparations. A Catholic reader can hold both findings at once without flinching. The force of law has no home team.
Leo XIV Names The Moment
Pope Leo XIV published Magnifica Humanitas in May, and its section on war could have been written about this week. He describes a world where “the force of international law is thus replaced by the claim that ‘might makes right.’ Consequently, tribunals that are competent for settling disputes between States or dealing with war crimes are often weakened or bypassed, with devastating ramifications for political culture and social cohesion.” [8] He then lists what gets thrown overboard when that happens: proportionality, access to food and water, and “respect for the lives of civilians, especially children,” which “come to be regarded as naïve relics of the past.” [9]
The Holy Father also does something Catholics need to hear clearly. For centuries we reached for the just war theory, refined by Saint Thomas Aquinas, to test whether a war and its conduct could be called righteous. Leo says that framework, “which has all too often been used to justify any kind of war, is now outdated,” while keeping “the right to self-defense in the strictest sense.” [10] That is a development in the Church’s teaching, and it governs how I read this story. The old checklist could be run after the fact to bless almost anything: the school sat next to a Guard compound, the intelligence was stale, proportionality was a judgment call. Leo closes that door. The question now is whether you saw the people you were about to kill, and whether you’ll account for it.
He even anticipates the “dated intelligence” defense. Writing about weapons guided by data and automation, he insists that “the chain of responsibility must be identifiable and verifiable; those who design, train, authorize and employ technology must be held accountable for their decisions,” and that “accountability and blame are not collapsed into ‘the machine.’” [11] A target list is a machine. Blaming it is the oldest trick in modern war, and the Pope has already named it.
Aquinas On The Ruler And The Law
Saint Thomas saw the hard part 750 years ago. He grants that the sovereign is “exempt from the law” as far as its coercive power goes, “because none is competent to pass sentence on him, if he acts against the law.” That’s honest. No court can compel the United States. But Thomas continues: “as to the directive force of law, the sovereign is subject to the law by his own will,” on the principle that “whatever law a man makes for another, he should keep himself.” [12]
The United States helped write the law it’s now being measured against. Justice Robert Jackson took leave from the Supreme Court to prosecute at Nuremberg. American diplomats shaped the UN Charter in San Francisco, and the Senate ratified the Geneva Conventions. Nobody can coerce us into keeping them, which is precisely why keeping them means something. A nation that submits to law only when it can be forced to has told the world what it thinks law is.
So here’s what the Church actually asks of my country this week. Publish the Minab investigation. Name who chose the target and why. If the finding is that we hit a school full of girls because a list was out of date, say so, and make restitution to their families. Do the same for Lamerd if the denial doesn’t hold. And stop pretending that the reputation of a council in Geneva settles whether we owe an answer.
Pray for the girls of Shajareh Tayyebeh school, for the 22 dead at Lamerd, for the Iranians facing the executioner, and for the American officers who will someday have to write down what they knew.
This story turns on the primacy of law over force among nations.
One principle from the Church’s social teaching, applied to the week’s news, in your inbox each Saturday.
Footnotes
- Jamey Keaten, “UN-Backed Experts Cite Possible US War Crimes in Iran Strikes,” Associated Press (via Military.com), September 17, 2026, military.com; “U.N.-Backed Experts Cite Possible U.S. War Crimes in Iran, Including a School Attack,” NPR, September 17, 2026, npr.org; “U.N.-Backed Experts Allege U.S. War Crimes in Iran,” CBS News, September 17, 2026, cbsnews.com; “U.N.-Backed Experts Cite Possible U.S. War Crimes in Iran Strikes,” The Washington Times, September 17, 2026, washingtontimes.com; “Hegseth Announces Probe of US Role in Strike at Girls School in Minab, Iran,” Fox News, foxnews.com; “UN Mission Finds ‘Grounds to Believe’ U.S. Committed War Crimes in Strikes on Iranian School, Sports Centre,” CBC News, September 17, 2026, cbc.ca. ↩
- Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2004), no. 440, vatican.va. ↩
- Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, no. 437. ↩
- Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, no. 439. ↩
- Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), no. 2313. ↩
- Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, no. 503. ↩
- Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, no. 506. ↩
- Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2026), no. 202, vatican.va. ↩
- Magnifica Humanitas, no. 203. ↩
- Magnifica Humanitas, no. 192. ↩
- Magnifica Humanitas, nos. 199–200. ↩
- Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. 96, a. 5, ad 3, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, newadvent.org. ↩
Books Cited
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- Catholic Church, Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Doubleday / Image, 2003)
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