You can't have a serious discussion of this bombing without addressing the information warfare component. To this day we don't know what actually happened. Between the general public and the facts, there are many middlemen, all with their own distorting factor: the IRGC; the US government; western press outlets such as the Guardian; and the people quoted by the press.

IRGC is making claims that no other party can verify first-hand. Everything from the number of explosions, the extent of the physical damage, the number of wounded and dead, the number of civilians wounded and dead - these are all unverified claims and should be treated as such. Not only is the IRGC obviously biased and incentivized to maximize media pressure on the US and Israel: they are known for information warfare of exactly this nature. To take their statements at face value, and present them as established facts in the opening paragraph, as this article does, is journalistic malpractice.

Again, the basic facts on the ground are not known, yes all parties are projecting narratives with a certainty that we should all be suspicious of.

Without this stable foundation of knowing what actually happened, and why, the very premise of this article collapses on itself.

EDIT: the flurry of responses to this post illustrate the problem. It's difficult to even have a respectful, fact-driven discussion on this topic, because everyone is tempted (and encouraged) to rush to their political battle stations. Nobody wants to discuss information warfare, because they're too busy engaging in it. I think that's worrying and problematic. No matter which "side" you're on, it should be possible to distinguish what is known and what is not; and implementing basic information hygiene. Or do you think you are uniquely immune to disinformation?

You're not wrong but what we can tell from open sources is:

- The building does seem to have actually been a school and "detached" from the rest of the military complex.

- The school the Iranians claim it was does seem to exist even if it's not 100% clear that's the identical location.

- At the time of the attack school would have been in session.

- The signature of the attack seems similar between all the buildings attacked and we have footage showing a Tomahawk hitting the area.

Another thing we can tell is that the US has to know the truth here and isn't coming out with an official statement.

And I'm saying this as someone who thinks the Iranian regime is evil, needs to be struck down, was trying to acquire nuclear weapons etc.

As to the numbers I agree they are to be treated with suspicion. The Iranians are obviously motivated to lie, inflate them, and treat all casualties as civilians. But we can still try and estimate given the size of the building what would be the number of students. We can also estimate the outcome of the missile hitting the building and correlate with the photos and satellite imagery, and until we have better data use those estimates.

Everyone acknowledges that the US killed a whole bunch of kids, including the US

> To this day we don't know what actually happened.

I feel like we know enough already. A school was bombed, the ones who did it sucks big time and should be held responsible. Currently, the US and Israel is waging a war against Iran, and one of them dropped the bomb(s), unless suddenly Iran got their hands on American weapons, then that needs to be investigated too, because someone surely dropped the ball at that point.

The basics remain the same, investigations have to be launched to figure out where exactly in the chain of command, someone made a mistake, and then hold that person(s) responsible for their fuck up.

Have those investigations been launched?

>> Again, the basic facts on the ground are not known

Think for a second WHY that is! They can find and kill the Iranian leaders who will be doing the utmost to conceal their location and yet that can't tell us whose bomb blew up a specific building? Of course they can. They're waiting until people forget and they can final release the result of their 'investigation'.

I think its fair to treat things that the Trump administration and the Iranian military agree on as facts. If they were distortions that favored one side, we would see pushback from the other. Maybe there are distortions that somehow benefit both of these parties, but it seems unlikely. At minimum, then, this was a school, the Americans bombed it, and children died as a result.

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