A top Fox News military analyst has blasted Donald Trump and suggested the president is well aware the U.S. may have killed schoolchildren during a missile strike in Iran.
Fox News Chief National Security Correspondent Jennifer Griffin was asked by host Bret Baier for her views on Trump’s insistence that Iran may have been behind the strike on the Shajareye Tayabeh girls’ school in Minab, Hormozgan Province, which reportedly killed at least 175 people, many of them children.
The Feb. 28 attack on the school is believed to have been carried out by a U.S. Tomahawk missile, which neither Iran nor Israel is thought to possess. Speaking at a Monday press conference, Trump tried to deflect blame for the horrific incident by suggesting Tomahawks are “sold and used by other countries” and that whether Iran had any is “being investigated right now.”
During a Monday appearance on Fox News’ Special Report, Griffin said it is “surprising” that Trump is still suggesting Iran was behind the attack, given that the available evidence points to the U.S.
“The U.S. has Tomahawks. Tomahawks have to be fired from either submarines or from warships,” Griffin said. “The Brits and the Australians have Tomahawks, but they’re not part of this conflict. And then you also have the Japanese, who are in a testing phase. So it seems highly unlikely that it would be anyone’s Tomahawk other than a U.S. Tomahawk that hit that school.”
“And I think the president knows that,” she added. “He just knows that this is certainly a mistake, a big mistake, and it’s being investigated, but he’s trying to sort of muddy the waters by talking about the Tomahawk.”
Trump is currently the only person in the administration suggesting that Iran could have targeted one of its own schools on the first day of the U.S.-Israeli attacks in the country.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has not fully endorsed the idea that the schoolchildren were killed by a missile fired by Iran but suggested aboard Air Force One on Saturday that the only side that “targets civilians is Iran.”
In response to a request for comment, the Pentagon told the Daily Beast: “This incident is under investigation.”
The president was further pressed during the press conference, at Trump’s golf resort in Doral, Florida, on why he was suggesting Iran may have obtained a Tomahawk and bombed its own school when no one else appeared to be entertaining that possibility.
“Because I just don’t know enough about it,” the 79-year-old admitted. “I think it’s something that I was told is under investigation.
“But Tomahawks are used by others, as you know. Numerous other nations have Tomahawks; they buy them from us. But I will certainly, whatever the report shows, I’m willing to live with that report.”
Elsewhere during her Special Report appearance, Griffin reiterated that there is “no evidence that the Iranians fired anything at this school.”
“If you look at the satellite imagery—and there have been a lot of investigations from the air, from the satellite photos—it shows the impact and the likelihood that it was a Tomahawk,” she said.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
