Op-Ed

The Investigation Into the Minab Elementary School Bombing Is Done. Where Is It?

The Trump administration is stonewalling the public about the US’s deadliest strike on civilians in decades.

By Etan Mabourakh , 

Truthout

July 10, 2026

Bodies of children are carried to their graves during a funeral held on March 3, 2026, in Minab, Iran, for students killed in the U.S.-Israeli strike on an elementary school in Minab on February 28, 2026.Iranian press handout / Getty Images

New details are emerging about the U.S. attack on the Minab school that killed 168 people — and yet the Trump administration continues to stonewall and is refusing to release findings, even as CNN reports that U.S. military officials knew within days what happened.

Here’s what we know: On the morning of February 28, 2026, the first day of “Operation Epic Fury,” the United States bombed the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school in Minab, a small city in southern Iran. At least 168 people were killed — the majority of them girls between the ages of 7 and 12. More than 100 children and staff were wounded. By any measure, it was one of the deadliest single strikes on civilians in the history of U.S. military operations in recent decades.

But more than four months later, the U.S. government continues to stonewall the public over who is responsible for this horrific crime, and if anyone will be held accountable.

CNN just reported that U.S. commanders bypassed warnings about outdated targeting data ahead of the strike. Satellite imagery analyzed by NPR showed that the school, while adjacent to an Iranian naval base, had been walled off from that facility and operating as a functioning school since at least 2016. A New York Times analysis concluded that U.S. forces most likely struck the school amid attacks on that naval base. And critically, Reuters reported that U.S. military investigators themselves believed U.S. forces were likely responsible.


CNN just reported that U.S. commanders bypassed warnings about outdated targeting data ahead of the strike.

Neither the United States nor the Israeli government has taken public responsibility. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, when asked about the strike on March 4, said only: “All I know, all I can say, is that we’re investigating that.” He offered no commitment to transparency or accountability, and no timeline for the investigation. He also said that Operation Epic Fury would have “no stupid rules of engagement” and described U.S. military operations as delivering “death and destruction from the sky all day long.” President Donald Trump, when asked directly about the strike, said he doesn’t think it was the United States and that he doesn’t know if we are “ever going to solve that problem.”

On Mother’s Day, I Will Mourn Alongside the Grieving Parents of Minab
The first Mother’s Day proclamation was a call to disarm. It’s more crucial than ever to honor the day’s antiwar roots. By Negin Owliaei , Truthout  May 10, 2026

Some in Congress Have Demanded Answers

In the weeks that followed the Minab bombing, some members of Congress moved swiftly to demand accountability. On March 11, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland) led a letter signed by more than 40 senators to Secretary Hegseth, demanding a full investigation into the Minab strike and pressing the administration on its compliance with the law of armed conflict. The letter raised pointed questions: Did U.S. forces conduct the strikes? What was the intended target? Were AI tools used in targeting? Was a “no-strike list” established before operations began? The senators requested answers from Hegseth by March 18, 2026.


The American people are owed the truth. So are the families in Minab.

The following day, Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-California) led a letter signed by more than 150 House lawmakers raising alarm over the broader civilian toll in Iran — over 1,000 Iranians killed by early March. The letter called out the administration’s systematic dismantling of the institutions built to prevent exactly this kind of harm: budget cuts at CENTCOM, the firing of senior military lawyers responsible for compliance with the laws of war, and the gutting of the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence. Jacobs publicly demanded accountability during a congressional hearing as well. None of these letters received the substantive responses they demanded.

This week, on July 5, a group of senators and House members — including Elizabeth Warren, Mazie Hirono, Tammy Duckworth, Patty Murray, Kirsten Gillibrand, Andy Kim, Mark Kelly, Jason Crow, and Sara Jacobs — pressed Secretary Hegseth on the Inspector General’s findings in a May report raising new concerns about failure to uphold civilian harm mitigation responsibilities. The lawmakers argue that Hegseth is putting service members and Department of Defense missions “at risk by gutting civilian harm mitigation and response (CHMR) efforts and that the DoD no longer has the ‘personnel and capabilities’ required to comply with the law and its congressionally-mandated CHMR responsibilities.”

The Investigation Is Finished. Where Is It?

By May, there was reason to believe the military’s internal review was nearing completion. CENTCOM Commander Admiral Brad Cooper told reporters that the probe into the Minab school strike was near its conclusion. And yet no findings have been released publicly. Some reports indicate the investigation has been submitted but has remained stalled under review from CENTCOM, raising concerns that it’s being stonewalled for political purposes. The investigation appears complete — and buried.

Congress could use the National Defense Authorization Act to require the declassified release of the investigation’s findings.

Meanwhile, the above-mentioned May 13, 2026 report from the Pentagon’s own Inspector General found that the Department of Defense had systematically failed to implement its Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan (CHMR-AP). All eleven objectives of the plan — once making progress — were reclassified as “at risk.” The IG found that the legally-mandated Civilian Protection Center of Excellence lacked key staff and leadership. Officials from the Joint Staff told the IG that gutting these programs “harms readiness” and increases the risk of “civilian casualties, damaged coalitions and alliances, loss of legitimacy, increased local resistance.”

Accountability Will Require Transparency

This is not a complicated question of law or politics. The investigation is done. People in the U.S. have a right to know how this happened, why it happened and how we can prevent it from ever happening again. The children killed at that school deserve far more than silence.

There are clear vehicles through which lawmakers can — and should — act. Congress could use the National Defense Authorization Act to require the declassified release of the investigation’s findings. Lawmakers can attach explicit reporting requirements to defense legislation, forcing public disclosure. And members of Congress, as they have already begun to do, can continue raising these questions in hearings and in letters until this administration can no longer ignore them.

What is not acceptable is the current state of affairs: an investigation reportedly completed, a president who says he doesn’t think it was us, a defense secretary who has openly dismissed the rules designed to prevent war crimes, and 168 people — most of them schoolgirls — whose deaths have received no official accounting.

The American people are owed the truth. So are the families in Minab.


This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.

Etan Mabourakh

Etan Mabourakh is the national organizing manager at the National Iranian American Council, where he organizes grassroots volunteers through a nationwide chapter network and coalitions across the United States. A Jewish Iranian American based in New York, Etan has consulted on campaigns at every level of government, speaks frequently on U.S.–Iran policy, as well as civil rights and antiwar advocacy.

UK Government publishes bill to end LGBT+ conversion therapy

The draft legislation has been welcomed by LGBT+ rights campaigners

Chris Jarvis  

JUNE 25, 2026 

 Left Foot Forward

The government has published its draft legislation to ban LGBT+ conversion practices in England and Wales.

Conversion therapy refers to medical, psychiatric, psychological, religious, cultural or other attempts which seek to change someone’s gender identity or sexuality.

The government’s proposed ban will set the criminal threshold for conversion practices as conduct that aims to change someone’s sexual orientation or transgender identity through abusive acts that seriously harm the victim.

According to the government, conversion therapy is still happening in England and Wales because of legal loopholes in legislation that covers domestic violence, coercive control and communications.

The new legislation would create new criminal offences of carrying out abusive conversion practices that cause serious harm, alarm or distress to the victim; and encouraging or assisting an abusive practice performed outside England and Wales.

Carrying out abusive conversion practices could see offenders sentenced to up to five years in prison.

On announcing the legislation, Olivia Bailey MP, Minister for Equalities, said: “Legal loopholes have left LGBT+ people vulnerable to these harmful acts which is why we must legislate.

“Conversion practices are driven by the false belief that being LGBT+ is shameful and can be forcibly changed.

“No-one should face abuse just because of who they are. That’s why we are delivering on our manifesto commitment to ban abusive conversion practices.”

The bill has been welcomed by LGBT+ rights campaign group Stonewall. Simon Blake, Stonewall’s CEO said: “People from the LGBTQ+ community are not broken or in need of ‘fixing’. That’s why I’m so pleased the government have published a draft bill to ban conversion practices that attempt to change someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity. These practices are abuse, and every day without a ban in place leaves people at risk of serious harm.

“This is testament to the hard work of campaigners and survivors who have bravely shared their stories and refused to give up. We look forward to continuing our work with sector partners, Parliament, and government to ensure the legislation is robust and effective.”

Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward

Image credit: Quinn Dombrowski – Creative Commons

LGBTIQ Pride

The Revolution Will be Queer or it Will Not Be a Revolution

Statement by Democracia Socialista (Puerto Rico)

Wednesday 10 June 2026, by Democracia Socialista (PR)

Queer and Trans oppression is class oppression.

The oppression of LGBTQI+ people is not some cultural debate separate from the economic issue. It is a tool of the ruling class. Its function is to divide. The working class is taught to fear our trans coworkers more than the boss who pays us both less.

While we fight amongst ourselves, we don’t fight against those who exploit us. The right wing knows this—that’s why every attack on LGBTQI+ rights is linked to attacks on union rights, reproductive rights, public health, and education.

It’s the same struggle. Liberation comes from the same place.

The enemy in Puerto Rico is not abstract.

It has a name—the organised right—and it has a budget, lobbyists, and representation in the Capitol. It has spent years pushing against LGBTQI+ rights, against gender-inclusive education, and against bodily autonomy.

These people advance when we don’t confront them. Through laws, through their resumes, through media rhetoric, through pressure on every legislator willing to cooperate. Their strategy is long-term, and they have executed it patiently.

Marching in Pride is a way of standing up against that project. In the streets, ready to fight.

This fight is not happening on just one island.

While we march in Puerto Rico, anti-trans laws are advancing in Texas, Florida, Tennessee, and two dozen other states. Hungary has outright banned Pride. Italy is dismantling LGBTQI+ protections that took decades to build. The process is international and coordinated — the same think tanks, the same churches, the same funding networks.

But so is resistance. Every Pride march taking to the streets right now—in San Juan, in Budapest, in Rome, in Tegucigalpa, in Buenos Aires—is part of the same thing. No one is fighting this alone. And no one should have to.

Internationalism is not just decoration for the socialist program. It is survival.

What We Defend.

We don’t have a five-point programme for LGBTQI+ rights. We have commitments. These guide us when deciding where we stand.

* Equality Equality without conditions. There is no “debate” on rights. No one’s body is "politically controversial".

* Dignity Self-determination over one’s own body, one’s own identity, one’s own life. Without permission, without guardianship, without panels of experts deciding who has the right to exist.

* Solidarity Concrete solidarity with trans people, especially with black and migrant trans women, who bear the heaviest burden of violence and receive the least attention.

* Tradition Pride as a political tradition, not a product. The Stonewall uprising was a rebellion against police repression, led by Black and Latina trans women. That’s the line we stand by and for.

What we do not accept.

X We do not accept the politically deactivated Pride that the market wants to sell us. The version where the only demand is to be left alone to consume in peace. Where the bank that finances the displacement of working-class neighbourhoods displays its logo in rainbow colours once a year. It’s not a Pride celebration for brands. It’s a Pride celebration for the people.

X We do not accept performative solidarity. We say it in June because we say it all year round. Pride isn’t our marketing month. If the words don’t point to concrete work, they’re not worth the ink.

X We do not accept that all this has already been won. Every right that seems secure is a right that the right wing is organising to overturn. We saw it with Roe v. Wade. We’re seeing it with anti-trans laws. It’s our turn here too, before it catches us by surprise.

Democracia Socialista: For a free Puerto Rico, ecosocialist, feminist, anti-racist and sovereign

Translated by David Fagan for International Viewpoint from pride.socialista.pr.

P.S.

If you like this article or have found it useful, please consider donating towards the work of International Viewpoint. Simply follow this link: Donate then enter an amount of your choice. One-off donations are very welcome. But regular donations by standing order are also vital to our continuing functioning. See the last paragraph of this article for our bank account details and take out a standing order. Thanks.

Puerto Rico

• Democracia Socialista holds its Second Congress
• Challenges and opportunities in Puerto Rico
• A New Alliance Could Change Puerto Rican Politics
• Left advance faces lawfare challenge
• First congress of Democracia Socialista proposes ecosocialism as the alternative to the climate crisis

• Democracia Socialista (PR)

  Democracia Socialista is the Puerto Rican section of the Fourth International.

OP ED

World Professional Association for Transgender Health Is US Government’s New Target

WPATH’s advocacy has led to expanded insurance coverage for trans health care — and now it’s in the crosshairs.

By Erin Reed , 

ErinInTheMorning

June 20, 2026

People march through Manhattan on Trans Day of Visibility on March 31, 2025, in New York City.Spencer Platt / Getty Images


Between the 1940s and 1950s, the House Un-American Activities Committee and Senator Joseph McCarthy’s investigations targeted Americans for their beliefs, their associations, and their speech. The mechanism was not primarily criminal prosecution — it was investigation, subpoena, and the threat of institutional destruction. Its goal was compliance through fear. That fire burned through Hollywood, through the federal government, and through universities, before finally being recognized for what it is today: one of the most extreme government overreaches in American history, wielding extraordinary powers to persecute a disfavored group. Now, the federal government is engaged in a structurally identical campaign — but this time, it is waged against transgender people and the institutions that serve them, targeting hospitals with subpoenas, threatening organizations and nonprofits with funding cuts, and hauling medical societies before kangaroo courts in an attempt to beat them into submission. And with a lawsuit filed against the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) in a transparently forum-shopped court in Texas, the administration has turned toward its most prized target of all: the central organization that advocates for trans healthcare worldwide.

The lawsuit, brought by the FTC and the attorneys general of Texas, Alaska, Iowa, and Nebraska, alleges that WPATH has violated the FTC Act by engaging in “deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce” — weaponizing federal consumer protection law, statutes designed to go after companies selling snake oil and fake cancer cures. The complaint alleges that WPATH “provided the means for medical providers to make false and unsubstantiated claims to parents in order to sell pediatric medical transition services,” and that this makes them a target under consumer protection laws. This is despite the fact that WPATH sells nothing — it is a nonprofit medical advocacy organization that publishes guidelines based on its assessment of the available science, advocating for a transgender patient population that governments and medical institutions had historically forsaken. Its advocacy has led to expanded insurance coverage for transgender healthcare, recognition by every major American medical organization that gender-affirming care is legitimate medicine, and an infrastructure of clinical standards that thousands of providers rely on. For this — for succeeding in its mission — the government has deployed an unprecedented legal theory to destroy it.

Or, mostly unprecedented. During the Red Scare, the federal government targeted organizations and individuals not for crimes but for their published views. In 1949, Owen Lattimore, a professor of international relations at Johns Hopkins University, was accused by McCarthy of being “the top Russian espionage agent.” The evidence was Lattimore’s published academic writings on China policy, which McCarthy deemed too sympathetic to communism. Lattimore was indicted over testimony about his scholarly work — charges that were eventually dismissed, but not before his reputation was destroyed and he was placed on leave. The government simultaneously maintained a Hollywood blacklist that affected more than 300 people in the entertainment industry — actors, screenwriters, directors — none of whom were convicted of crimes. The government weaponized its investigatory powers specifically to make it impossible for anyone in a position of institutional influence to associate with, employ, or support people whose views ran counter to the government’s preferred ideology. This is exactly the architecture we are seeing deployed against transgender healthcare today: the government is threatening any organization that opposes its stance on transgender people, the blacklist is developing in real time, and anyone who pushes back is investigated.

So, too, is there a parallel in the choice of tribunal. During the Red Scare, McCarthy chose the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations because it gave him maximum control — everyone on the committee was sympathetic to his crusade. The FTC’s forum shopping follows the same logic. The government first targeted WPATH with subpoenas in Washington, D.C. — the natural venue for an action by a federal agency headquartered there. When that failed, when Judge Boasberg found “extensive evidence of animus and wafer-thin justifications” behind the investigation, the government did not accept its loss. Instead, it ran to the Northern District of Texas — where Trump-appointed Judge Mark Pittman and George W. Bush appointee Reed O’Connor handle virtually every civil case, and where the administration has already centralized its legal campaign against gender-affirming care. The venue justification? WPATH was originally incorporated in Texas in 1980, even though it actually operates out of Illinois and its principal place of business is in East Dundee, outside Chicago. A 46-year-old incorporation filing is the thread on which the government hangs its choice to bypass the D.C. court that already ruled against it and bring its case before a judge it knows will be sympathetic.

Not that this justification even matters, because the government is weaponizing the same forum-shopping playbook against hospitals across the country. The DOJ has been issuing criminal grand jury subpoenas to hospitals demanding lists of doctors and trans youth. When the government attempted to enforce similar subpoenas in the states where the hospitals actually operate, it lost virtually every time. So what was the tactic they used afterwards? The DOJ “based its investigation” in the Northern District of Texas — convening a grand jury there to subpoena hospitals in New York, Rhode Island, and elsewhere — specifically to land before Judge Reed O’Connor, another reliable conservative appointee. Even a federal judge acknowledged from the bench that “it’s pretty clear to me that this was shopped to Texas.” Harvard Law’s Alejandra Caraballo called it “a blatant unlawful effort by the DOJ to intimidate providers of gender affirming care to trans youth by engaging in judge and forum shopping.” The rationale is extraordinary: if you base an investigator in Texas, you can use a Texas grand jury to demand the private medical records of children treated at a hospital in Manhattan. The government lost in the courts that play fair. So it found one that wouldn’t.


In the Face of Anti-Trans Escalation, We Need More Than Legal Strategies
The swiftness with which Trump dismantled decades of meager, hard-fought protections exposed the limits of legal work.  By Chase Strangio , Truthout December 31, 2025

This campaign extends far beyond medical organizations and doctors, but into all organizations for any perceived political or social support of transgender people people. During McCarthyism, the government did not just investigate suspected communists — it demanded that institutions purge any association with disfavored views. Federal employees were screened for loyalty. Teachers were forced to sign oaths. Libraries were pressured to remove books. The goal was not just to punish the accused but to make the ideology itself unspeakable in public life. The Trump administration is executing the same strategy against transgender people.

The administration’s latest proposed federal rule would evaluate every federal grant recipient in America—not the grants themselves, but the recipients — for promotion of “gender ideology,” defined as any acknowledgment that gender identity differs from sex assigned at birth. It has already forced the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to erase all references to transgender people from its materials and ordered it to deadname transgender children in its missing persons reports. It pressured RAINN, the nation’s largest anti-sexual-violence organization, into removing all support for LGBTQ+ survivors. It has scrubbed federal websites of scientific studies on transgender health, removed data on transgender populations, and erased the word “transgender” from the Stonewall National Monument — the birthplace of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement. Republican-controlled states have in some cases barred transgender teachers from classrooms. During the Red Scare, the Attorney General maintained a list of “subversive organizations.” Today, the federal government is building something just as powerful: a regulatory infrastructure that treats the mere acknowledgment of transgender people as grounds for institutional punishment.

This chapter in American history will be remembered alongside the darkest abuses of government power against disfavored groups. What is happening now to transgender people is structurally identical to those prior abuses. The administration has rejected every check on its power: when courts rule against it, it moves to friendlier courts. When medical organizations push back, it investigates them too. WPATH is its latest target. But this will not stop with WPATH. It will continue until transgender people have nowhere left to turn for care, for recognition, or for the basic dignity of being acknowledged as human beings — unless, as in every previous era of persecution, enough people recognize what is happening and say “enough.”

This piece was republished with permission from Erin In The Morning.

This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.

Erin Reed  is a transgender journalist reporting on LGBTQ+ legislation, news and life every day.

There Is No Pride in Genocide: Rome Pride Rejects Pinkwashing as Israel’s Slaughter Continues

Michael Leonardi

June 12, 2026

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Photograph by Matteo Nardone

In late May 2026, Rome Pride organizers delivered a clear and courageous message: there will be no platform for complicity with genocide. Italy’s only Jewish LGBTQ+ organization, Keshet Italia, was barred from marching with its own float in the upcoming June 20 parade. The reason was straightforward and principled—Keshet refused to endorse Rome Pride’s political manifesto, which explicitly condemns Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza and demands a clear break from the Zionist state’s policies of occupation, apartheid, and extermination.

This decision has triggered predictable outrage from Zionist quarters, who immediately cried antisemitism. But the real issue here is not prejudice—it is accountability. Pride was born as a radical act of resistance against oppression, not as a rainbow-washed corporate parade where war criminals get to fly rainbow flags while bombing children.

The Abomination of Pinkwashing

Israel has spent decades perfecting the art of pinkwashing—cynically parading Tel Aviv’s vibrant (and heavily subsidized) Pride scene as proof of its “liberal democracy” while maintaining the most brutal settler-colonial regime on earth. Queer Israelis may serve openly in the occupation forces, but Palestinian queers live under a double nightmare: the daily violence of military occupation and the conservative social pressures exacerbated by decades of dispossession and siege.

In Gaza and the West Bank, survival itself is precarious. Israeli authorities have a documented history of blackmailing vulnerable queer Palestinians into collaboration, using their sexuality as a weapon of control and betrayal. The destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system, the deliberate targeting of civilians, and the starvation campaign have made any semblance of safe queer existence impossible. Families are wiped out in entire neighborhoods, hospitals reduced to rubble, and children maimed or orphaned with no access to basic care.

Over 70,000 Palestinians have been slaughtered since October 2023, with thousands more maimed, orphaned, and starved. Israel’s genocidal campaign is now spreading into Lebanon, with relentless bombing campaigns and ground incursions driving up the death toll and pushing the region toward a wider, catastrophic war. When entire families are erased and entire communities are shattered, waving a rainbow flag over the carnage is not progress—it is moral obscenity.

A Necessary Stand

Rome Pride’s organizers understood this reality. They made participation conditional on alignment with opposition to the “ongoing genocide in Gaza by the State of Israel.” This is not discrimination against Jews—it is a rejection of any normalization of Israeli state crimes. Jewish individuals remain welcome to march as part of the broader community, but not as representatives of a regime carrying out live-streamed mass murder while claiming moral superiority through selective LGBT visibility.

The exclusion of Keshet Italia exposes the fault line running through global queer movements: Will solidarity be consistent and principled, or will it bend to the pressures of Zionist lobbying and pinkwashing propaganda? True liberation politics cannot selectively ignore the oppression of Palestinians—queer or otherwise—while celebrating rainbow imagery in Tel Aviv. This decision forces a long-overdue reckoning with the limits of identity politics detached from anti-imperialist struggle.

The human cost makes the hypocrisy unbearable. Pinkwashing does not save lives; it launders blood and distracts from the systematic violence that makes daily life a hell for Palestinians under occupation.

Photograph by Matteo Nardone

The Roots of Pride and the Test of Our Time

Pride emerged from the Stonewall riots and decades of militant struggle against police violence, societal exclusion, and state repression. It was never meant to be neutered into feel-good consumerism or geopolitical branding that serves powerful interests. Today’s test is whether the movement will stand against the greatest moral atrocity of our generation or allow itself to be co-opted by those who profit from endless war and ethnic cleansing.

The Rome decision, however controversial, reaffirms that genuine Pride must be anti-imperialist and anti-colonial at its core. It cannot make peace with a settler state that practices apartheid and genocide. As the Gaza Generation continues to mobilize across Italy and beyond—pressuring governments, blockading ports, disrupting arms shipments, and building real solidarity from below—this stand in Rome sends a powerful signal that the days of unchallenged pinkwashing are coming to an end.

There can be no pride without justice. No rainbow flags over mass graves. No celebration of “LGBTQ rights” while Palestinian children are bombed and starved—and while Israeli aggression expands into Lebanon with utter impunity.

From the river to the sea, liberation must be for all—or it is for none. Rome Pride has drawn a necessary line in the sand. The rest of the global queer movement should take note and follow suit.

There Is No Pride in Genocide.

This article was inspired by the suggestion and interest of my LBGTQ+ offspring Val(Gaia) Leonardi who thought a more profound look at Pride and the pinkwashing of genocide was necessary after the controversy and zionist uproar surrounding Roma Pride and their principled positition.

Michael Leonardi lives in Italy and can be reached at michaeleleonardi@gmail.com