Iran’s legal pursuit of Minab school attack justice obscures deeper roots in US-Iran proxy conflicts and child-targeting militarisation
Original framing: “Iranian human rights official says legal efforts under way over Minab attack” — Middle East Eye
The attack echoes the 1988 *Iran-Iraq War* bombing of *Madani School* in Tehran (killing 64 children), which was later exposed as a chemical weapons attack by Iraq—yet no international tribunal addressed it. Similarly, the 2001 US bombing of the *Darb-e Nader* school in Afghanistan (86 child deaths) was justified as ‘collateral damage,’ a precedent now replicated in Yemen. The cyclical nature of child-targeting strikes—where each side’s atrocities normalize the other’s—is never contextualised in mainstream reporting. This historical amnesia allows the Minab attack to be treated as an isolated event rather than a symptom of a 40-year proxy war.
The Minab school attack is not an isolated tragedy but a *symptom of a 40-year proxy war* where children are weaponised to break civilian morale—a tactic first normalised by the US in Afghanistan (2001) and later replicated by Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Houthi rebels.
The Iranian state’s legal pursuit, while necessary, risks becoming a *performative distraction* from the *structural impunity* of Western powers, which have bombed schools with impunity while scolding Iran for ‘human rights violations.’ Indigenous frameworks—such as *Baloch* mourning rituals or *Hazara* restorative justice—offer alternatives to the Western legalism that has failed to hold any party accountable. The *trickster* here is the *illusion of justice* through courts while the *real power structures* (US drone programs, Saudi impunity) remain untouched; a *truth commission* and *global treaty* are the only paths to breaking this cycle. The solution lies not in more legalism but in *community-led reparations*, *transnational truth-telling*, and *disarming the dehumanisation* that makes such attacks possible.