‘Iran Says School Massacre’ and the Media Repeats: How a Regime Claim Became a Viral Headline

On Saturday, February 28, Israel and the US launched a joint military operation against the Iranian regime, targeting senior leadership, including Supreme Leader Ali Hosseini Khamenei, and military commanders. The operation has also seen a significant targeting of military infrastructure, including air defense systems, missile launchers, and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) command centers.

The Iranian regime, like its terrorist proxies Hamas and Hezbollah, has embedded its infrastructure within civilian locations. As protests broke out at the beginning of 2026, the movement of weapons and military equipment into protected civilian locations, such as schools and hospitals, was widely observed. This prompted Iranian civilians to take protective measures and warn one another of the dual use of protected spaces.

Geolocation/Correction/Additional Info:

1. Confirmed geolocation: The Imam Ali school in Arak, Iran (34.088253, 49.687137) @GeoConfirmed .
2. The photo is from as early as January 8th, 2026 – Per earliest reports it just depicts them as “Security forces”.
3. This school appears… https://t.co/6y7INfX8Fx pic.twitter.com/JWAZJ34bch

— Tal Hagin (@talhagin) January 27, 2026

When the IDF targeted an IRGC compound in Minab, southern Iran, Iran’s state broadcaster, the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), immediately claimed that the US had purposefully targeted the Shajareh Tayyebeh school full of young girls.

Al Jazeera soon published the story, blaming Israel for the deaths of children.

The Western media, without questioning the credibility of the source, immediately reported on the strike and followed Al Jazeera’s lead by holding Israel responsible.

In doing so, the media further amplified and legitimized claims from the same regime that has spent the past two months executing its own civilians in the streets protesting for freedom.

The same outlets that included a caveat about their inability to independently verify the number of protesters killed by the regime were the same ones that published and continuously updated alleged casualty figures without any verification other than a regime source.

This is not to say that innocent civilians may not have died in the strike, but they were certainly not the target of Israel or the US. Moreover, a civilian building was purposefully exploited by the Iranian regime, putting civilians in immediate danger.

The school, reportedly intended to be for the children of military personnel, was built directly next to an IRGC naval base, according to anti-regime media.

Independent geolocation analysts further indicated that the Shajareh Tayyebeh school was located in the same premises as the Sayyid al-Shohada barracks of the IRGC Navy’s Asef Brigade. While it remains unclear whether many civilians were present in the area at the time of the strike, witnesses have reported that the school was not targeted but rather the adjacent IRGC buildings, where missiles were reportedly being stored.

This information was, of course, omitted from IRIB’s reporting of the strike. As a result, when Western outlets covered the story, the school’s proximity to — and apparent integration with — an IRGC military complex was missing from the coverage.

The Iranian Embassy in Austria continued with the disinformation campaign on behalf of the regime, sharing a now-viral image on X of a backpack that reportedly belongs to one of the schoolgirls killed in the strike.

However, research analysts have found the photo to be AI-generated, as a Google Gemini watermark was detected hidden in the image.

Adding to the uncertainty surrounding the already disputed casualty figures, basic questions remain unanswered, most notably who exactly was killed in the strike.

As of the time of writing, The Telegraph reported 165 casualties, including 81 pupils, citing Iranian sources. That leaves 84 individuals not identified in the public breakdown. And given that the school was located within an IRGC compound, it is legitimate to ask whether any of the remaining casualties were affiliated with the regime, a distinction that has not been clarified.

The disinformation does not stop at pro-regime sources. A widely-circulated photograph online purported to show a misfired IRGC missile that had fallen inside Iranian territory and struck the school, shifting the blame onto the Iranian regime.

However, independent analysts found that the school was located more than 1,000 kilometers from where the photo was taken. They also show that the structure in the photograph faced a direction inconsistent with the alleged missile trajectory, making it unlikely that the image depicted the Shajareh Tayyebeh school.

The Iranian regime has taken a page out of Hamas’ notebook. For the past two and a half years, Hamas has made exaggerated and false claims, which the media repeatedly amplified before doing their own due diligence. Corrections, when they came, rarely traveled as far as the original headlines. That same cycle of rapid accusation, viral spread, and delayed scrutiny is now playing out in Iran.

The nature of war between Israel and the Iranian regime means that vast amounts of information are released in real time, often before facts can be fully verified. When reporting omits key context or relies heavily on regime-affiliated sources, narratives can solidify before the truth has a chance to catch up, leaving the public with a distorted understanding of events.

In a time of instantaneous reporting and with clear evidence that narratives are being deliberately shaped for strategic purposes, rigorous scrutiny by the media is essential to ensure the truth prevails.

The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.