By James Bradley, Photo by karandaev
COMMENTARY LAGUNA HILLS, CA–It’s that time again! Grab your mug. The coffee I serve is black, no sugar. Sit.
You’ve probably heard the news of the missile strike on February 28, 2026 in Minab, Iran that hit the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ school. About168 are dead. Most of them are girls, ages seven to twelve. They were little girls, maybe with common names like Shirin, Sara, Nazanin. They were kids who liked recess, not rockets.
ABC broke the news first with a headline like, “57girls killed.” Reports came straight from Tasnim, Iran’s state news agency. There were no photos, no videos. They just gave us numbers. I couldn’t sit still.
That same day, I posted on X. The Tasim drop had no proof. Where’s the independent evidence? Satellite records show the school inside IRGC barracks. Did propaganda hide the horrible use of human shields?
Views on my post trickled in. I got a few nods from OSINT folks, but no one answered the questions I posed. Doubts about what could have happened hit me. Could it be true that a US/Israeli missile hit right there?
Thoughts of the incident lingered, like a bad aftertaste. It brought me back to 2020, when I ran for a CA US House seat against Congressman Ted Lieu. It was a long shot. CA politics was messy then just like now.
I was in Beverly Hills then. Palm trees swaying lazy in the breeze of the California sun while the state was crippled by Newsom’s COVID-19 lockdowns. Beverly Hills exploded. Demonstrations erupted at the Hollywood Bowl. Freedom marches were rampant. All were shouting for a return to personal liberties.
My door knocking campaign did not stop. One time I knocked and an Iranian dad opened the door. I told him I was running for US congress as we talked. “They watch us here,” he whispered to me. “Not just Tehran—here.” I walked away thinking he was dealing with old wounds. At another house, an Iranian woman cracked open her door. She was maybe fifty with a hijab slipping like she’d forgotten to care about it. I gave her my campaign spiel. “My brother protested in Tehran,” she told me flatly. “IRGC called him from a burner phone from Los Angeles. They told him to come home. He didn’t. Now he’s gone.” These threats still remain today. This week in Los Angles, families wait at LAX in hopes of their families trapped in the Middle East returning home.
The long arm of the IRGC suggested that in those personal stories are present in the headlines about the girls’ school. Footage surfaces later that shows a low missile glide with plume curling up pushed by Mehr News, one of the Iranian regime’s mouthpieces. BBC and Bellingcat geolocate the missile pathway. Planet Labs satellites show craters. Every outlet jumps with headlines pointing a likely precision US Tomahawk targeted an IRGC base next door and claimed the girls’ school as collateral.
Let’s think about that next door comment for a moment. It’s a lie. Those satellites owned by Planet Labs are DoD tied. They show the school fused right to Sayyid al-Shohada barracks. No gap till 2016. Then a chain-link wall goes up. CNN, NYT, BBC all point to it, claiming the two facilities were separate since 2016 as if a chain-link stops a blast. Tomahawk radius? It’s fifty, hundred meters. Its shockwave tears walls. Shrapnel flies at its blast and fire goes everywhere. Craters spread across both sides.
Kids died because the school was always inside. This was no accident, but sheer design. What happened on February 28th was tagged as “Iran’s Human Shield PSYOP” by The Times of Israel. Why?
It’s because the man who ran it, Ali Khamenei, didn’t believe in accidents. He was Supreme Leader since 1989, Khomeini’s pick. At eighty-six, he had a beard and white eyes that never blinked. His was voice like gravel and rarely spoke. He didn’t need to. His word was law. He continued the vision to “export the revolution,” a mantra ignited by his predecessor in the 1980s. It’s an uprising imposing the fingers of Islamic faith, state, education, thought, and ideology all in one. No separation. He funded the Quds Force, armed proxies trained in unconventional warfare executing state sponsored terrorism. It was labeled a US Foreign Terrorist Organization in 2019.
He built bases in schools. Why? Like Hamas taught us, it’s an effective way to control minds and mold future soldiers. You put a barracks next to a classroom, and every recess, every assembly, kids see soldiers, uniforms, guns, and heroes. It normalizes violence. Turns fear into loyalty. It’s indoctrination by osmosis.
Man, this coffee is strong! Still working through my cup.
Anyway, there’s nothing better to wedge an idea into minds than to parrot it. The regime didn’t miss a beat. Abbas Araghchi, the Iranian Foreign Minister, was tagged as a mouthpiece, with his smooth as silk English-perfect, Oxford polish speech. Loyal to the bone, he posts graveside pics post-strike, and tweets “Bodies torn to shreds… innocents murdered.” No mention of the base nor whisper of embedding the base into a school. Just rage. He’s a televised calm face, diplomatic, reasonable, speaking propaganda while Khamenei pulled strings from shadows. Araghchi’s job was to make the world feel guilty and make this tragedy is the West’s fault.
Then there’s Pirhossein Kolivand, an Iranian Red Crescent Chief leader from at the Red Cross. He’s not a doctor. He’s just a regime loyalist seemingly handpicked for optics. He spins the bombing as a unique tragedy, and states the “incident has no comparison with any other incident,” according to a recent New York Times story. A viral interview video shows rescue crews digging rubble. He says that second strike hit a nearby hospital and describes the newborns that were moved to safety. Kolivand’s voice pauses on camera. His job is seemly to sell grief, make the incident viral and make it human. No mention of a base or the use of human shields, just victims.
The western mainstream media laps up his story and waters it. The barrage of headlines, dismiss the human shield factor.
CNN March 11, 2026: “US strike likely hit a school in Iran due to outdated intelligence, sources briefed on initial findings say “
NYT March 8, 2026: “U.S. Tomahawk Hit Naval Base Beside Iranian School, Video Shows.”
WaPo March 8, 2026: “Video appears to show U.S. Tomahawk hit naval base near Iranian school”
BBC March 4, 2026: “Iran school and nearby military base struck multiple times, satellite image reveals.”
Reuters March 5, 2026: “Exclusive: US investigation points to likely US responsibility in Iran school strike, sources say”
All have similar edges to the story using words such as “likely” and “appears.” They show the same Mehr clip and the same Planet Lab overlays. Credibility of all claims are based on “experts.”
One viable export is N.R. Jenzen-Jones, a director of the UN-funded Armament Research Services (ARES). He maintains a Swiss-neutral composure by keeping his reports technical. He talks about the “precision munitions” and “multiple simultaneous” strikes that day. There’s no politics in his glib, just talk of missile fins, glide paths, and blast patterns. Outlets love him. You can quote him directly with no risk.
Another expert is Wes Bryant. This is where it gets messy. Bryant has strong credentials. He called in ISIS bombs as a Joint Terminal Attack Controller (JTAC) on the ground during thousands of coordinated strikes. Now he’s out of the service and bitter. His recent X post screams antifascist views of Trump as a fanatical tyrant, and Hegseth as a morally depraved Secretary of War. Bryant lost his Pentagon civilian-harm analyst gig under this admin. Are his takes a possible whistleblower grudge? He calls Minab “target misidentification and complete departure from protections.” Outlets lean on him and paraphrase his views but they never name him and seemingly ghost him. That’s because if you Google him, you see the hate and the rants promoting #RemoveTheTrumpRegime fire. He’s brilliant, too brilliant, but a polarized loaded gun. The public want his tech, not his baggage. Yet the baggage he broadcasts tilts everything he reports.
The narrative is locked, with key terms recirculating in MSM like “precision mishap,” “collateral,” and “likely.” If you step out of this consensus, you’re vilified, canceled or labeled extremist. If you call out embeds, you’re Islamophobic. If you question proxies, then you dabble in conspiracy. Censorship’s the glue. My book with Shokin called “Biden’s Corruption and War” presents Shokin’s proof in his voice. It tells of pressure on Ukraine under Biden’s hand. We put it out. Amazon sells it. Then, nothing happens. X buries it by flagging it as mis-info.
Truth’s buried, with bodies of the innocent girls, despite all our channels to information through AI plumes, DoD sats, etc. Coordinated headlines reign until drone tape drops or until a witness speaks.
If you’re coffee is running low, let me know. I’ll pour you more, because there is more to go over.
Let’s revisit the use of collateral damage by the Iranian regime. Here’s where it gets personal. On March 3rd, funerals were held for the 168 girls killed in Minab. Thousands attended with a procession coffins and portraits of girls with bows in their hair. The procession masked the logistics of a military site near a school. Blood is on someone’s hands.
In 2022, the death of 22-Mahsa Amini who was arrested by Iranian police for improperly wearing a veil and was later killed, started a quiet revolution. The phrases and imagery of Iranian women are still bleeding became a symbol of the regime’s continued violence against women and girls.
Maybe this is why the five Iranian female soccer players at the Asian Cup final chose to remain silent during their anthem, as bold a protest? After State TV host Mohammad Reza Shahbazi stated, “…authorities must treat them as traitors… they must be properly dealt with so that others take a warning from it.” Families back home get visits and threats of jail, torture, and execution if the girls don’t return. The five players file emergency asylum. Despite their efforts for safety, IRGC groups in Australia harass and threaten them. The IRGC, they don’t argue. They disappear you. The soccer players remain in hiding, even as refugees.
So, the Minab girls, they’re not stats. They’re daughters, sisters and kids who should’ve been drawing, laughing, or dreaming. After the second strike, there was no escape.
You’ll probably need more coffee for this part.
The hope of asylum that the West offered to those running from the strong arm of the radical Islamists may be shrinking. Influence of both Suni and Shia Islamic cultures are spreading like wildfire in the West. Radical sects silence dissent and export fear. Here in Cedar Riverside, Minnesota where Somali blocks have mosques on every corner, State Sen. Omar Fateh tweets, “No-go zone for white supremacists.” Sounds like tough talk, until you dig and find a growing allegiance to Sharia Law. The Arab-American heartland city of Dearborn, Michigan was mentioned in a recent X post as an area where whites are not welcomed. A few weeks back, the US House debated on whether Sharia Law violates the Constitution. Islamophobia claims circulated.
In England, the Tower Hamlets, Bradford have whole neighborhoods where non-Muslim outsiders get stares. Right-wing clips show kids wearing hijabs, waving foreign flags, and chanting. The UK government floats making an “anti-Muslim hostility tsar” a public office. It sounds nice, until you see who defines hostility. In 2026, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), known as the highest legal arm in the nation to litigate criminal persecutions, tried to reverse a ruling that freed a Muslim man who burned a Quran in protest. The CPS said his act was Islamophobic. The case was dismissed by the high court.
How does all of this impact the American public? We walk softer now. Talk quieter. Think twice before posting. We reflect on the gas prices that move like ocean waves from proxy wars for stability.
What is clear is that on February 28th Ali Khamenei died after a joint US-Israeli strike made a daylight hit on his Tehran compound. Thirty bombs dropped from Israeli jets. Blue Sparrow missiles launched. CIA intel guiding it all. Initial reports were denials of his passing, and claimed that he was safe. Then they finally backtracked. Bodies pulled from the rubble included his family: daughter, son-in-law, grandkids. His wife lingered days, then was gone. Iranian state TV called the event “martyrdom” during Ramadan. They decreed a forty-day mourning, period and a seven-day holiday. On March 8th, his fifty-six-year-old son Mujtaba, an IRGC tied ultra-conservative, got named successor after a rush decision by the Assembly of Experts. Crowds cheered in some streets, and in other areas they toppled statues.
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