Experts mandated by the United Nations’ foremost human rights organ aver that they have unearthed “reasonable grounds” for believing that the United States perpetrated war crimes in two strikes in Iran, including upon a school in the southern city of Minab.

They likewise arraign Iran’s theocratic government for committing crimes against humanity against its own populace, in a report issued Thursday.

The report, albeit non-binding, augments the corpus of international evidence amassed concerning crimes committed during the war in Iran, and may ultimately be invoked in endeavours to secure justice before international courts.

The fact-finding mission on Iran, chaired by jurist Sara Hossain of Bangladesh, comprises independent experts and was established in 2022 by the Human Rights Council, the U.N.'s foremost human rights body, headquartered in Geneva.

The experts were anticipated to present their findings on Monday before the council, which is constituted of 47 U.N. member countries.

The White House issued a scathing rejoinder, with spokeswoman Anna Kelly asserting that the human rights body has “accomplished nothing for human rights while spouting unserious nonsense for decades.”

"The sole belligerent in this conflict to have perpetrated war crimes is the Iranian regime—a regime that has slaughtered thousands of its own citizenry, slain Americans abroad, executed acts of terrorism in the Strait of Hormuz, and unleashed indiscriminate assaults upon its neighbors in the region," Kelly said Thursday.

The international fact-finding mission asserts that its conclusions regarding U.S. war crimes are anchored in a pair of U.S. airstrikes whose toll encompassed no fewer than 178 civilians, among them women and children.

At the outset of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran in February, at least one U.S. missile struck the Shajareh Tayyebeh school in Minab, as documented by a reporters' investigation.

No definitive accounting of what transpired has yet been rendered.

Iranian state media have reported that 168 people were killed in the strike, the overwhelming majority of whom were children.

“Subsequent to the United States and Israeli attacks on 28 February, the mission found reasonable grounds to believe the United States committed the war crime of launching indiscriminate attacks resulting in the loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects,” a U.N. statement concerning the team’s findings said.

The U.S. State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reporters.

In their report, the experts concluded that “the building of the school was the intended point of impact” and that the ensuing devastation was not attributable to an errant strike or to collateral damage stemming from an attack on a compound of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard adjacent to the school.

The Trump administration has thus far declined to acknowledge culpability directly or to disclose the conclusions of a Pentagon inquiry into the school bombing.

The U.N.-backed team predicated its allegations upon two strikes — the first entailing Tomahawk missiles that struck the “clearly identifiable” school, and the second in which Precision Strike Missiles dispersed tungsten pellets over a “clearly identifiable sports complex and residential area” in the southern city of Lamerd, likewise on Feb. 28.

The United Nations-endorsed team reported that 22 civilian men and women had been killed.

U.S. Central Command has disavowed any responsibility for the strike on Lamerd.

The team ascertained that killings perpetrated by state security forces in Iran had transpired on a “staggering scale,” and that civilians had been subjected to “gross human rights violations and crimes against humanity committed by their own government.”

Iranian security forces perpetrated “violent repression” over the preceding two years — discharging assault rifles into crowds, bludgeoning demonstrators and apprehending healthcare personnel, among other excesses, the team averred.

Detainees were subjected to torture and denied access to legal counsel, thereby leaving their families “in the dark” as to their whereabouts, the experts stated.

The Tehran government escalated its recourse to capital punishment, asserting that upwards of 70 individuals – among them five women and three boys – continued to face “imminent risk of execution,” they added.

“The report concluded that many of these gross violations amount to crimes against humanity — including murder, imprisonment, torture, and other inhumane acts committed as part of a widespread and systematic attack on civilians,” the statement said.

The experts asserted that the United States and Iran ought to desist from all rights violations and crimes, and to furnish “full reparations to victims.”

The report, predicated upon a “victims-centered approach,” was substantiated by interviews with 73 individuals both within and beyond Iran’s borders, alongside documentation, satellite imagery, photographic and video material, and information gleaned from “credible” organizations and experts, the experts wrote.

The protracted conflict that has displaced people from their homes in Iran, compounded by an internet shutdown and the two governments' failure to cooperate fully, somewhat hampered the team's endeavours to obtain information.

Nearly three dozen entreaties from the experts for information from Iran’s government went unanswered, they said, as did requests in June to the U.S. government for information and meetings with officials.