On the morning of Feb. 28, schools across Iran began to close for the day. As parents in the city of Minab made their way through traffic to the Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School to pick up their children, an American Tomahawk missile struck the school building. By the time parents arrived, their sons and daughters were buried underneath a mass of rubble. More than one hundred and sixty-eight civilians were killed in the strike that day, and over 100 of them were younger than 12.
The evidence clearly shows the United States carried out the attack. But how it happened is less clear. Tomahawk missiles are sophisticated, precise weapons, and reporting from The New York Times suggests outdated intelligence misidentified the school—which was located next to a military installation—as a target. This horrible tragedy may not have been deliberate, but it was preventable. The school was clearly labeled in maps, and a children’s sports field was visible in satellite imagery—raising serious questions about U.S. and Israeli targeting decisions.
That the strike occurred under the command of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth raises even graver concerns. In both rhetoric and action, Hegseth has sought to erode the U.S. military’s adherence to the laws that govern warfare. His disregard for the laws of war also comes at a time when he is encouraging rapid integration of artificial intelligence to speed up targeting decisions. Hegseth’s attempts to dismantle existing Pentagon efforts to mitigate civilian harm belie a troubling reality: he is creating the conditions whereby incidents like the elementary school strike, even if accidental, may be permissible.
Opening the Door to Error
Hegseth’s antipathy toward the laws of war predates his tenure as secretary of defense. In his 2024 book The War on Warriors, Hegseth describes military Judge Advocates General—the military lawyers responsible for advising battlefield commanders on the laws and rules of engagement—as impediments. He brags about calling them “JAG-offs” to his unit when he served in the Army. In one of his first acts as secretary, he purged the top ranks of the JAG corps. Earlier this March, he directed an overhaul of the military’s legal offices, which has raised alarms about the potential to further undercut necessary legal oversight while the United States is using force (much of it illegal) in multiple theaters.
Hegseth’s disdain for the laws of war mirrors his singular, bizarre obsession with “maximum lethality.” In multiple instances, he has suggested that the laws of war serve only to bind the hands of the “warfighter,” who Hegseth encourages to “hunt, dismantle, demoralize, destroy” and, of course, kill the enemy.
The Pentagon is also under pressure to carry out the war in Iran at massive speed and scale, and it is increasingly relying on AI to do so. Through its “Project Maven” initiative, the Department of Defense has integrated AI throughout its intelligence collection and mission planning. Earlier this year, Hegseth unrolled policies encouraging the accelerated use of AI, with an intent to compress the speed at which targeting decisions are made. These policies appear to have had an impact: Over the first 10 days of the war in Iran, the Pentagon claims to have struck 5,000 targets, a massive scale of operations. And although AI has great potential to assist the U.S. military in achieving greater precision in wartime—and thereby reducing civilian casualties—it requires proper integration and oversight. It is unclear the degree to which this is happening.
Hegseth’s recent conflict with the AI company Anthropic over concerns that its technology could be used for autonomous lethal weapons or mass domestic surveillance sent a message that he would be unlikely to prioritize restraint or oversight when deploying AI systems. At the same time that it is accelerating AI utilization, the Department of Defense has also seen an approximate 10 percent reduction in force over the last year. Of note, Hegseth gutted the offices mainly responsible for civilian harm mitigation efforts. In this environment, accelerating the speed and scale of the department’s operations—whether from command pressure or AI utilization or both—clearly raises the risk of error.
As the days and weeks progress, the culture Hegseth seeks to instill at the Pentagon will continue to create more unnecessary pain for innocent families around the world and generate more anger toward the United States. Already, the Iranian Red Crescent has reported over 67,000 civilian facilities have been struck in three weeks of war, including hundreds of schools, hundreds of health facilities, water desalination plants, and residential areas. As many as 3 million Iranians have been displaced. While it is unclear which of these strikes may be attributed to U.S. or to Israeli forces, it is difficult to see the overwhelming pattern as anything more than a disregard for humanitarian law and innocent human life.
A military culture that disregards civilian harm doesn’t just impact civilians in combat zones. It also puts service members at risk of violating the oaths they swore or becoming complicit in war crimes—which carries with it deep psychological and moral harms. This possibility is not an abstract concern: the Department of Veterans Affairs has cited exposure to “morally injurious events” as a risk factor for suicidality. Increasing this risk is particularly alarming at a time when a suicide crisis plagues the U.S. military, with over 17 veterans taking their own lives each day.
Disregard for civilian harm carries security implications as well, potentially undermining the reputation of the U.S. military. Already allies and partners are limiting cooperation with the U.S. military over concerns that they may be enabling war crimes or extrajudicial killings. The culture Hegseth has established at the DOD is actively eroding the longstanding partnerships that keep U.S. troops—and the American people—safe. Undermining the laws of war also sends the message to any belligerents – including U.S. adversaries – that these laws are optional. Finally, discarding these laws provides no strategic battlefield advantage. While they have fallen short in practice, from Vietnam to Iraq, military commanders have recognized that strategic success cannot be achieved through brute force alone, but rests on gaining the trust and confidence of the civilian population.
Undoing History
Hegseth loves to conjure history to support his vision of the “warrior ethos.” In his speech to military leaders in Quantico last September, he harkened to Rome in the fourth century and to George Washington and Thomas Jefferson in the 1700s. Throughout this speech and others, he has claimed he is leading a “restoration”: restoration of lethality and the ability of the warfighter to operate outside the bounds of the law.
But, at least as far as modern military practice is concerned, Hegseth is an aberration, not an exemplar. By 1949, the United States had signed the four Geneva Conventions that form the backbone of the binding laws of war. Of course, the United States has an imperfect record of adhering to these laws, with dark records in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, and elsewhere. But, aside from President Donald Trump and Hegseth, successive U.S. presidents and secretaries of defense have sought to strengthen civilian protection and harm mitigation efforts.
In 2017, Secretary of Defense James Mattis ordered the DOD to review civilian casualties in counter-ISIS operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, work that Secretary Mark Esper continued during his tenure. In 2021, responding to the results of that review, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin made civilian harm mitigation efforts a focus, launching the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan and, as part of this effort, created a Civilian Protection Center of Excellence at the Pentagon. Hegseth effectively dissolved it.
Since the strike on Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School, 46 senators and 121 members of Congress have demanded that the Pentagon provide answers regarding its investigation into the tragedy. The Trump administration has not meaningfully responded. It has failed to acknowledge its role in the strike, let alone apologize to the affected families. Congress should continue to exercise its oversight authority and demand that Hegseth and others provide a public accounting for the errors that led to the strike and outline efforts to ensure similar mistakes won’t happen again. Congress can also ensure civilian harm mitigation efforts are not subject to the whim of any future secretary of defense by seeking to codify these practices into law and properly resource them.
Hegseth may present his version of a warfighter focused on “maximum lethality, not tepid legality” as the paragon of American military power, but for all his tough talk, he fails to recognize the true strengths of the U.S. armed forces. The U.S. military has become the most effective and powerful fighting presence in the world not because of brute lethal force, but because of its professionalism and precision. Fostering these qualities requires a leader to recognize that the loss of innocent life demands deep reflection, learning, and resolve not to repeat mistakes. It also requires approaching the laws that bind U.S. armed forces as moral and strategic imperatives. Tragically, it’s too late for more than a hundred families in Iran who will never have the chance to see their precious children grow up, but it is not too late for others like them.
