Officials Cite AI Reliance in 123 Iran Child Deaths

Officials involved in an unreleased Pentagon review said overreliance on an AI-enabled targeting system contributed to a US strike that killed more than 150 people at an Iranian elementary school, including 123 children, on the first day of the Iran war.

The officials said the Minab site had been cataloged as an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps facility using outdated information, then fed into Palantir’s Maven Smart System with other target candidates. Two US missiles later hit the school.

Maven records and Minab target

Officials said some personnel expected Maven to flag stale intelligence or contradictions in target files, though they did not establish why users believed the system would perform that check. Target-list work that previously took hours was compressed into minutes as more than 1,000 Iranian targets were hit in the first 24 hours.

A Palantir spokesperson said the company was not responsible for the underlying data or for identifying intelligence deficiencies, and said there was no evidence its software was at fault. People familiar with Pentagon contracts said the government retained primary responsibility for the information fed into Maven.

Officials said civilian-harm mitigation staffing across the Defense Department had fallen by roughly 90% over recent years, shrinking to fewer than 20 people overall. US Central Command’s group fell from 10 people to one, and no member reviewed the Minab site before the missiles were launched.

A United Nations fact-finding mission said this week there were reasonable grounds to believe the United States committed the war crime of launching an indiscriminate attack. By September 29, the open question is whether the Pentagon releases any part of the review, names accountable offices, or changes approval rules for AI-supported targeting.