Donald Trump had just signed his Iran memorandum at Versailles. He was talking about peace, economics, oil prices and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. The summit setting was grand. The messaging was about ‘deal-making’ and ‘strength’.
Then one journalist asked about the school.
Would anyone in his administration be held accountable for the strike that killed more than 100 children on the first day of the war?
“No,” Trump said.
He then called it “such a strange question.”
Then: “You’re talking about a long time ago.”
It was 28 February. The first day of the US-Iran conflict. Shajareh Tayyebeh Primary School in Minab, in Hormozgan province in southern Iran. Reuters reported that the attack killed more than 175 children and teachers, according to Iranian officials. Reuters has also reported that an initial internal US military investigation found US forces were likely responsible for the strike, though the Pentagon has not publicly acknowledged any preliminary findings.
The school appeared to be adjacent to a Revolutionary Guards barracks. Reuters reported that US officials responsible for creating targeting packages appeared to have used out-of-date intelligence. The head of US Central Command said the investigation had been “complex” because of the school’s proximity to an active Iranian cruise missile base, but that the probe was nearing its conclusion.
Human Rights Watch said the February 28 attack should be investigated as a war crime. It said the laws of war prohibit attacks where expected civilian harm would be disproportionate to anticipated military gain, and called on the United States and Israel to assess their responsibility, make findings public, and hold those responsible to account.
Amnesty International was equally direct. Those responsible for “the deadly and unlawful US strike” must be held accountable, it said, warning that US authorities “could, and should, have known it was a school building.”
Trump’s fuller answer at the G7 press conference in Évian-les-Bains was that it was under investigation, that mistakes are made in war, and that “nobody did that on purpose.”
The problem with that answer is not that it is wrong on its face. Nobody serious was asking Trump to claim children were deliberately targeted. The question was about accountability – whether anyone would answer for what happened if the strike was caused by out-of-date intelligence, poor targeting, reckless rules of engagement, or any failure in the chain of command that put bombs through a school roof.
“Not on purpose” is not the end of the matter when 175 children and teachers are dead.
The “long time ago” line landed hardest. It was picked up quickly because people understood instinctively what was wrong with it. One person wrote that Trump was “counting on the news cycle to move on and forget about all the war crimes that happened this year.” Another: “A lifetime ago. Hundreds of lifetimes ago.”
For the families in Minab, 28 February is not ancient history. There is no diplomatic calendar on which a school strike becomes old news. For the parents who sent children to school that morning, for the teachers who died in their classrooms, for the survivors, the distance between then and now is measured in days – not in the news cycles that have since moved on to the signing of memoranda in palatial French buildings.
The deal itself is already being argued over. As we reported in our Versailles irony piece, the agreement includes accepting that Iran can continue uranium enrichment, diluting stockpiles inside Iran under IAEA supervision, lifting the US naval blockade, offering significant sanctions relief and proposing a $350 billion reconstruction fund. The Guardian’s analysis described it as “not a full surrender document, but an admission that America could not achieve what it sought through war.”
Whether the deal holds is a separate question. A peace settlement may well be better than a continuing war. The Strait of Hormuz matters. Oil prices matter. These are not nothing.
But a peace deal stops future killing. It cannot settle what has already happened.
The journalist who asked the question did something straightforward – refused to let the ceremony of a signing become a burial for an unanswered question. Trump’s answer to it was “no” and “a long time ago.”
That answer is now part of the record alongside the memorandum.
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