Israeli police kill two young Palestinian boys and their parents in West Bank

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“Israeli police killed four members of the Bani Odeh family, including two young boys, in the occupied West Bank. The family was shot in the head and face by undercover forces during a joint operation with the military, who claimed the vehicle posed a threat. The incident is under review, but the circumstances remain unclear.

​

Mother, father and brothers aged five and seven shot in the head as they returned from Ramadan shopping trip

Emma Graham-Harrison and Sufian Taha in Jerusalem

A woman comforts Khaled, 11, who survived the shooting, at the funeral for his parents and brothers.Photograph: Mohamad Torokman/Reuters

Israeli police have killed two young Palestinian brothers and their parents in the occupied West Bank, shooting all four in the head and face as the family returned from a Ramadan shopping trip.

Mohammed, five, Othman, seven, who was blind and had special needs, their mother Waad Bani Odeh, 35, and father Ali Bani Odeh, 37, were driving through their hometown of Tamoun late on Saturday when Israeli forces opened fire.

The killings came hours after Israeli settlers had shot and killed Amir Moatasem Odeh, 28, in Qusra south of Nablus. The attackers also stabbed his father, Moatasem Awda, who was taken to hospital in serious condition.

There has been a surge of Israeli violence against Palestinian civilians in the occupied West Bank since Israel and the US launched their war on Iran at the end of February.

Over two weeks Israeli settlers have shot six civilians dead during invasions of Palestinian olive groves, villages and grazing land, and one man died after inhaling military-grade teargas used by the Israeli army.

The attack on the Bani Odeh family brought the number of Palestinians killed to 11. Two brothers survived the shooting. Khaled, 11, the oldest of the siblings, said he had heard his mother crying and his father praying before they died.

After the gunfire stopped, Israeli border police dragged him out of the wreckage, taunted him about the murders of his family and attacked him. One of the Israelis said “we killed dogs”, he told Reuters.

The family had been in the nearby city of Nablus to buy clothes for the upcoming Eid festival, which marks the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Families often stay up late in a month when adults fast during daylight hours.

“What did this family do? They went to buy Eid necessities, and to put a smile on those children’s faces,” said Mansour Abu Islam, a neighbour and cousin of Ali. “This is clear evidence that Palestinian lives have no value.”

The gunmen were an undercover unit who were not in uniform and were driving a car with Palestinian license plates, Abu Islam said.

Israeli forces opened fire without warning, Khaled said in an interview from hospital. After the shooting an Israeli asked him who had been in the car. “I said: ‘My father, my mother, my three brothers, and me’. He said: ‘You are lying,’ and then they started beating and kicking me.”

All four victims were were shot in the head and face, and Ali, who was driving, was also shot in the chest and left hand, the Palestinian ministry of health said.

Israeli forces initially prevented ambulances reaching the scene, the Palestinian Red Crescent said in a statement. The military later towed the family car away, according to witness accounts and video shared on social media.

A spokesperson for the police said the Bani Odeh family had been killed during a joint operation with the Israeli military. Forces opened fire on the vehicle when they “perceived an immediate threat” after it accelerated, the statement said.

Asked what threat was posed by four young children and their unarmed parents, or whether the shooting violated Israeli rules of engagement, the police and military declined to comment.

The police and military were in the area to “arrest wanted suspects believed to be involved in terrorist activity,” the statement said. “The circumstances of the incident are under review by the relevant authorities.”

The Israeli military has command responsibility for all forces operating in occupied Palestine. A spokesperson said border police killed the Bani Odeh family and declined to comment further, referring all questions to the police.“

 

F.C.C. Chair Threatens to Revoke Broadcasters’ Licenses Over War Coverage

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“FCC Chairman Brendan Carr threatened to revoke broadcasters’ licenses over their coverage of the war with Iran, accusing them of spreading misinformation. Carr’s comments, echoing President Trump’s criticism of the media, have been condemned by Democratic lawmakers and free-speech advocates as a violation of the First Amendment. Carr’s tenure as FCC chairman has been marked by his willingness to bully and threaten the free press, according to critics.

​

The comment from Brendan Carr came on the heels of a social media message from President Trump criticizing the news media’s coverage of the war with Iran.

Published March 14, 2026Updated March 15, 2026, 12:37 a.m. ET

Brendan Carr in Washington in January.Eric Lee for The New York Times

Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, threatened on Saturday to revoke broadcasters’ licenses over their coverage of the war with Iran, his latest move in a campaign to stomp out what he sees as liberal bias in broadcasts.

As the war entered its third week, Mr. Carr accused broadcasters of “running hoaxes and news distortions” in a social media post and warned them to “correct course before their license renewals come up.”

“Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not,” he said.

Mr. Carr shared a Truth Social post by President Trump that criticized the news media for its coverage of the war with Iran. Mr. Trump referred to a storypublished by The Wall Street Journal that reported five American refueling planes had been struck in Saudi Arabia, claiming its headline was “intentionally misleading.” He accused the news media of wanting the United States to lose the war.

Dow Jones & Company, which publishes The Wall Street Journal, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in a similar vein, delivered a lengthy complaintabout CNN’s coverage of the war in the Middle East during a news conference Friday, saying that he looked forward to the news network being controlled by the billionaire David Ellison.

Mr. Ellison, who has a friendly relationship with Mr. Trump, is the owner of Paramount Skydance, which is seeking to purchase Warner Bros. Discovery for $111 billion. That deal, if it closes, will bring CNN under Mr. Ellison’s purview. He is best known in the journalism world for shaking up leadership at CBS News, where he has installed more conservative journalists.

Since taking over the F.C.C. chairmanship at the start of Mr. Trump’s term, Mr. Carr has regularly raised the possibility of seizing station licenses over various programming decisions at the major television networks, whose owned and affiliated stations need F.C.C. licenses in order to operate.

But long term experts in media regulation have said that the process for taking away station licenses is involved and exceedingly onerous by design. The pre-eminent national communications law prohibits the government from using regulations to censor.

Democratic lawmakers and free-speech watchdogs were quick to condemn Mr. Carr’s threat as a violation of the First Amendment. On social media, Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts called it “straight out of the authoritarian playbook,” while Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona said that “when our nation is at war, it is critical that the press is free to report without government interference.”

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which advocates for free-speech rights, said in a statement that Mr. Carr’s tenure as F.C.C. chairman “has been marked by his shameless willingness to bully and threaten our free press.” It called his latest post “shocking — and dangerous.”

Mr. Carr’s comments on Saturday follow a pattern he has charted, which critics say is dangerous and positions him as a national censor.

“Jimmy Kimmel Live!” was temporarily pulled off the air after Mr. Carr took issue with some of the ABC host’s comments, and Mr. Carr has suggested the F.C.C. should investigate the network’s daytime talk show “The View” over its political content. And in February, Stephen Colbert blasted Mr. Carr and said that his network, CBS, had barred him from airing an interview with a Democratic candidate in a U.S. Senate race because of new guidance by the F.C.C. about equal airtime for political candidates.

The Trump administration’s messaging against the news media comes as polls show it faces low public support for the war and it tries to thwart Iran’s efforts to block a vital oil route amid skyrocketing global oil prices.

Jim Rutenberg contributed reporting.

Ashley Ahn covers breaking news for The Times from New York.

---

More on the Fighting in the Middle East

---

• Mood in Tehran: Residents say a heavy, lifeless atmosphere hangs over the streets of Iran’s capital, which has endured relentless attacks throughout the war.

• U.S. Refueling Plane Crashes: A U.S. military refueling aircraft that was part of the war against Iran crashed in Iraq. The crash was not because of hostile or friendly fire, U.S. Central Command said. All six crew members died, bringing the number of U.S. service members killed in the war to at least 13.

• Iranian National Soccer Team: Seven members of the women’s team had sought refuge in Australia after they were labeled “traitors” at home. Four have since changed their minds.

• Testing Europe’s Military Might: To defend allies from Iran, the continent’s powers have mounted a rare show of force. But those efforts have also revealed the limits of Europe’s defense abilities, officials and analysts said.

• Staying Underground in an Israeli Border City: The Israeli government evacuated Kiryat Shmona during the last round of fighting with Hezbollah in 2023. Residents who were told it was safe to return are again under fire.

• Grounded Gulf Airlines: Emirates, Qatar Airways and Etihad Airways have become some of the world’s largest and most profitable carriers because of their location at the center of busy travel routes. The war has forced them to cancel tens of thousands of flights.“

 

A Refugee Died After Border Patrol Left Him at a Cafe. Fear Followed.

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“The death of Nurul Amin Shah Alam, a disabled Rohingya refugee, has instilled fear in Buffalo’s Rohingya community. Left alone by Border Patrol at a closed doughnut shop, his death has raised concerns about the treatment of immigrants and refugees. The community, already facing challenges like language barriers and halted green card processing, is now grappling with the loss of a member who sought safety in the United States.

​

Buffalo’s Arakan Rohingya community was rattled after a disabled man’s death. “Our worry comes from future incidents that may happen,” one resident said.

March 15, 2026Updated 10:25 a.m. ET

U.S. Immigration Crackdown

The body of Nurul Amin Shah Alam was prepared for burial on Feb. 26 in Buffalo. He was found dead five days after Border Patrol agents dropped him at a doughnut shop.Craig Ruttle/Reuters

In the Broadway-Fillmore neighborhood of Buffalo, fear is in the air.

It is where the city’s Arakan Rohingya community has made a home. And it is where refugees who are in the United States legally have been rattled by the death of a man who was left by agents from U.S. Customs and Border Protection at a closed doughnut shop on a frigid winter night. His body was found on a city street five days later.

The Rohingya community, and other Buffalo residents, are upset that the man, Nurul Amin Shah Alam, was left alone, five miles from his home. He was nearly blind, had trouble walking, couldn’t understand English and was wearing thin, jail-issued footwear.

“Our worry comes from future incidents that may happen,” said Alam Bin Mohamid, co-owner of the neighborhood’s new Burmese Bangla Grocery and Halal Meat store. “If this happens once, it’s likely to happen again unless there are preventive measures.”

The Rohingya, a stateless Muslim minority, have faced decades of repression in Myanmar, and many community members in Buffalo first made their way to Malaysia before settling in western New York. The family of Mr. Shah Alam was among them.

Mr. Shah Alam was 56 when he was found dead in late February. The story of his death, first reported by The Investigative Post, a nonprofit news outlet in Buffalo, has stirred outrage over the Department of Homeland Security’s treatment of immigrants and refugees.

Fatimah Abdul Roshid, Mr. Shah Alam’s widow, said that what happened to her husband had shaken the Rohingya community’s hope that they would feel safe in their new home.

“We thought we were safe here because we had papers to show somebody that this is who I am,” Ms. Abdul Roshid, wearing a traditional black niqab that left only her eyes visible, said through an interpreter, her voice catching through her tears. “But now our community is scared the way they were scared in other countries.”

One community activist estimated that about 2,000 members of the Rohingya community live in Buffalo. Most came after the Myanmar junta’s campaign of mass murder, rape and destruction in the western part of the country, carried out by the armed forces and the police from October 2016 to January 2017, when an estimated 700,000 refugees fled.

In their new home in Buffalo, the Rohingya refugees have gained access to health care and to public and religious schools. The number of Rohingya patients at the Jericho Road Community Health Center tripled between 2023 and 2025, to 1,000, according to the center, which has two clinics in Broadway-Fillmore. One in eight babies whose deliveries were handled by the health center came from a Rohingya family.

The neighborhood, which suffers from high levels of poverty and crime and was once a bastion of the Polish community, is now a home to African Americans and Bengalis as well as Rohingya people. The Rohingya, many of whom have construction skills, have moved into and are repairing dilapidated, 19th-century wood-framed cottages on streets bruised by past demolitions. Many of the homes are in the shadow of the Central Terminal, a towering former Art Deco train station that is being redeveloped.

The Rohingya neighborhood straddles Broadway, once the main commercial thoroughfare leading to Buffalo’s outer neighborhoods. The Rohingya community — with its three Rohingya-owned grocery stores and a restaurant — is adding to the street’s predominantly Bengali-owned businesses.

In their homeland, the Rohingya are systematically denied education and health care. In Buffalo, they see their new life as full of possibility, said Mohamad Rahman Imam Hussein, 31, the city’s first Rohingya real estate agent, who is active in the community. He arrived in Buffalo in January 2025, just before President Trump issued an executive order indefinitely freezing refugee resettlement in the United States. The Rohingya can learn a lot, he said, from the thousands of Bangladeshi refugees who came before them.

“They have built a blueprint. All of the communities have done that,” Mr. Imam Hussein said. “We were living like refugees in our home country. So, when we move to a new country, especially one that is well-structured like in the U.S., we have to learn everything from scratch.”

Mr. Shah Alam’s journey in western New York began on Christmas Eve in 2024, when he arrived as a refugee from Malaysia. He had gone there in 2002 to flee Myanmar’s military junta after being subjected to forced labor, and was later joined by his family. They decided to come to the United States because they couldn’t get the documents needed to become Malaysian citizens.

“A lot of our community members would say go to America, it is a place where you can thrive and be treated the same as other people,” one of Mr. Shah Alam’s sons, Mohamad Faisal Nural Amin, 23, said.

But shortly after Mr. Shah Alam arrived, he was arrested. A police report from February 2025 asserted that he had trespassed onto a woman’s property and damaged a shed door. The property owner called the police, who later said that Mr. Shah Alam had swung long poles he used as walking sticks at them. The police said a scuffle ensued, and that an officer was injured.

“I apologize for my husband’s mistake, that he got lost and ended up in a house, and that he didn’t listen to the cops, but to be fair he didn’t understand anything,” Ms. Abdul Roshid said.

Afraid that Mr. Shah Alam could be taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, given the agency’s aggressive actions across the country, the family elected to have him spend what became a year in the Erie County Holding Center. Eventually, he accepted a plea deal to a lesser charge than what he had initially faced.

Upon his release, Mr. Shah Alam was taken by Border Patrol and dropped off at a Tim Hortons doughnut shop. His son had been waiting outside the jail to take him home, while Ms. Abdul Roshid set her husband’s clothes out for him at home and prepared a meal to break the fast for the first night of Ramadan, the holiest Muslim holiday. His death on a city street, all alone, haunts them. No one had told the family that Mr. Shah Alam had been left at the doughnut shop.

“On his death bed, I couldn’t even see him, I didn’t even know where he was,” Ms. Abdul Roshid said. “And to find out he was gone without even saying goodbye breaks my heart.”

The Trump administration’s moratorium on new arrivals has put those Rohingya who were on the verge of being allowed into the country in limbo. That includes three of Ms. Abdul Roshid’s children, and her grandchildren, who remain in Malaysia. She and her other two sons who live in Buffalo are desperate to be reunited with their relatives.

Letitia James, the attorney general of New York, is investigating the circumstances surrounding Mr. Shah Alam’s Feb. 24 death and what transpired before then. A spokesman for the Buffalo Police Department said it was helping the investigation by seeking surveillance footage and witnesses.

Emails to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Buffalo field office and the Department of Homeland Security inquiring about whether the Border Patrol was investigating the handling of Mr. Shah Alam were not returned.

In an earlier emailed statement, Border Patrol officials said that their officers had offered Mr. Shah Alam a courtesy ride after he was released from the jail, and that he accepted. The officials said that they dropped him off at the Tim Hortons, which they determined to be a “warm, safe location near his last known address, rather than be released directly from the Border Patrol station.”

Imran Fazal, director of the Rohingya Empowerment Community, which helps refugees with filling out paperwork, understanding bills and facilitating legal services, said that Mr. Shah Alam’s experience was a reminder of the vulnerability that people feel when they encounter language barriers. (The Rohingya speak an Indo-Aryan language.) The halt in the processing of green card applications, ordered by Mr. Trump in November for those coming from Myanmar and 18 other countries, has also deeply concerned the community.

“People are not going outside if they don’t have to, unless it’s to go to work, and some are even going to work in a group because they are scared,” Mr. Fazal said.

Mayor Sean Ryan of Buffalo, a Democrat whose first executive order as mayor in January was to ban city officials from cooperating with ICE, said that the Rohingya had been a “welcome addition to the city.”

“The tragedy of this family is they fled state violence to go to Malaysia, and came to America for the promise of safety from government violence, and look what happened,” he said.“

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Judge Quashes Justice Dept.’s Subpoenas of Fed, Crippling Its Pursuit of Trump’s Rivals - The New York Times

Judge Quashes Justice Dept.’s Subpoenas of Fed, Crippling Its Pursuit of Trump’s Rivals

"Judge James E. Boasberg derided the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington for pursuing a case against Jerome H. Powell that appeared to be motivated by President Trump’s desire for vengeance.

March 13, 2026Updated 6:02 p.m. ET

“The government has offered no evidence whatsoever that Jerome H. Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, committed any crime other than displeasing the president,” Judge James E. Boasberg wrote.Caroline Gutman for The New York Times

A federal judge in Washington threw a major roadblock into a criminal investigation of Jerome H. Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, quashing grand jury subpoenas issued to the central bank by federal prosecutors over renovations underway at its headquarters in Washington.

In a blistering 27-page decision unsealed on Friday, the judge, James E. Boasberg, derided the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington for pursuing a case against Mr. Powell, delivering a serious setback to President Trump in his effort to use the criminal justice system to punish political foes or pursue his agenda. Mr. Powell has long resisted calls from the White House to significantly lower borrowing costs, prompting a litany of attacks that has also included an effort by the president to fire another top official, Lisa D. Cook.

“There is abundant evidence that the subpoenas’ dominant (if not sole) purpose is to harass and pressure Powell either to yield to the president or to resign and make way for a Fed chair who will,” Judge Boasberg wrote.

He continued, “On the other side of the scale, the government has offered no evidence whatsoever that Powell committed any crime other than displeasing the president.”

The ruling was a reminder of the real-world limitations on authority the president has claimed to be nearly boundless. Time and again, judges and juries across the country have rejected what they appear to increasingly view as attempts by the Trump administration to replace executive fiat for traditional rule of law. In particular, Mr. Trump’s efforts to pursue criminal cases against his perceived enemies have almost uniformly floundered, with either juries declining to bring indictments or judges questioning the basis of the charges.

Judge Boasberg’s decision did not necessarily mean the official end of the inquiry led by a Trump loyalist, Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney in Washington. But it has dealt a crippling, perhaps fatal, blow to an inquiry that might now delay legislative approval of the White House’s handpicked replacement for Mr. Powell while deepening divisions among Republicans.

If prosecutors intend to continue pursuing it, they would have to find other ways of obtaining evidence, like persuading a judge to issue a search warrant.

A fiery Ms. Pirro, appearing at a hastily called news conference in her office up the block from Federal District Court in Washington, where Judge Boasberg sits as the chief judge, said she planned to both appeal and file a motion requesting the judge to reconsider.

She also followed the bellicose lead of her boss, Mr. Trump, by attacking the judge, accusing him of harboring an animus toward the president and claiming that he had “neutered the grand jury’s ability” to obtain information from the Federal Reserve about its expenditures.

“Jerome Powell today is now bathed in immunity, preventing my office from investigating the Federal Reserve,” said Ms. Pirro, who asserted the subpoenas were issued because Mr. Powell ignored prior requests for information. “This is wrong and it is without legal authority.”

The exchange was the latest development in a three-sided battle between a top Trump ally determined to pursue a dubious legal course to placate the president, a Fed chair fighting for the independence of an institution whose stewardship is essential to the economy and a judge who has emphatically rejected the administration’s maximalist legal strategy.

The investigation began late last year, when Ms. Pirro’s office served two subpoenas to the Fed’s Board of Governors. Prosecutors sought records about recent renovations of the board’s buildings and testimony that Mr. Powell delivered to Congress that briefly discussed the project, which is running over budget by about $700 million and is set to cost around $2.5 billion. The administration seized on those cost overruns and accused Mr. Powell of mismanaging the project, culminating in a visit by Mr. Trump at the construction site in July.

The criminal investigation is only the latest in a string of attacks by the White House to pressure the Fed into lowering borrowing costs. The Justice Department’s investigation prompted a rare rebuke from Mr. Powell, who accused the White House of using the threat of criminal charges to coerce the central bank into lowering rates.

“This is about whether the Fed will be able to continue to set interest rates based on evidence and economic conditions — or whether instead monetary policy will be directed by political pressure or intimidation,” he said in January in an extraordinary video message.

The investigation also drew condemnation from lawmakers from both political parties. Crucially, several Republican senators on the powerful Banking Committee, which oversees the Fed and manages anyone nominated by the president to the central bank, voiced their support for Mr. Powell.

Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, a pivotal member of the committee, warned in January that he would block any attempt by Mr. Trump to nominate a new Fed chair, throwing a wrench into the president’s plans to replace Mr. Powell with Kevin M. Warsh, a former governor he tapped for the job. On Friday, Mr. Tillis said the judge’s ruling “confirms just how weak and frivolous the criminal investigation of Chairman Powell is and it is nothing more than a failed attack on Fed independence.”

He called on Ms. Pirro’s office to “save itself further embarrassment and move on,” while warning that appealing the ruling would delay the confirmation of Mr. Warsh as chair.

Judge Boasberg’s ruling was merely the latest embarrassing failure by the Justice Department to use the criminal justice system to go after people Mr. Trump has perceived to be his enemies.

In Ms. Pirro’s office alone, a pair of prosecutors working for her tried and failed last month to secure an indictment against six Democratic lawmakers who posted a video in the fall that enraged Mr. Trump by reminding active-duty members of the military and intelligence community that they were obligated to refuse illegal orders.

Around the same time, prosecutors in the office shelved their efforts to investigate whether former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his aides had broken the law by using the autopen to sign presidential documents, despite intense pressure from Mr. Trump to build a case.

In the Eastern District of Virginia, a judge dismissed the criminal cases brought against the former F.B.I. director James Comey and New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, saying the prosecutor who had brought them had been illegally appointed.

Prosecutors sought to continue pursuing the case against Ms. James, bringing charges to two separate grand juries, one in Norfolk, Va., and another in Alexandria, Va., in two weeks, only to be rejected twice.

In his ruling in the Fed case, Judge Boasberg began by quoting a few of the nearly 100 statements that Mr. Trump and his aides have made attacking Mr. Powell and pressuring him to lower interest rates. The judge also noted that last July, Bill Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, posted a message on social media “asking Congress to investigate Chairman Jerome Powell” over “his political bias,” the board’s renovations and the chairman’s testimony about them.

“In sum,” Judge Boasberg wrote, “the president spent years essentially asking if no one will rid him of this troublesome Fed chair. He then suggested a specific line of investigation into him, which had been proposed by a political appointee with no role in law enforcement, who hinted that it could be a way to remove Powell.”

Ms. Pirro, he went on, “promptly complied” with the suggestion to begin a criminal inquiry.

“Those facts strongly imply that this investigation was launched for an improper purpose, as were the resulting subpoenas,” Judge Boasberg concluded.

Tony Romm contributed reporting.

Alan Feuer covers extremism and political violence for The Times, focusing on the criminal cases involving the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and against former President Donald J. Trump. 

Glenn Thrush covers the Department of Justice for The Times and has also written about gun violence, civil rights and conditions in the country’s jails and prisons.

Colby Smith covers the Federal Reserve and the U.S. economy for The Times."

Judge Quashes Justice Dept.’s Subpoenas of Fed, Crippling Its Pursuit of Trump’s Rivals - The New York Times

Report from Beirut: Israel Expands Bombing Campaign & Mass Displacement in Lebanon | Democracy Now!

 

Report from Beirut: Israel Expands Bombing Campaign & Mass Displacement in Lebanon | Democracy Now!

Stacey Abrams: How to Stop Trump from Rigging the Midterms - YouTube

 

Stacey Abrams: How to Stop Trump from Rigging the Midterms - YouTube

Ghost town': Lebanon city deserted amid Israeli airstrikes

 

Hegseth’s Boasts of ‘Maximum’ Engagement Authorities Face Scrutiny After School Is Hit

 Hegseth’s Boasts of ‘Maximum’ Engagement Authorities Face Scrutiny After School Is Hit

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“Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s disdain for restrictive rules of engagement, aimed at minimizing civilian casualties, is under scrutiny following a U.S. missile strike that destroyed an Iranian elementary school, killing 175 civilians. The strike, intended for a nearby military base, relied on outdated intelligence, raising questions about the Pentagon’s targeting standards and the potential impact of Hegseth’s rhetoric on military culture. Critics argue that minimizing civilian harm is not only a moral imperative but also crucial for strategic success and maintaining international support.

​

The defense secretary has disparaged restrictive rules for opening fire that are aimed at reducing the risk of mistakes and civilian casualties.

March 13, 2026, 5:02 a.m. ET

“The dumb, politically correct wars of the past were the opposite of what we’re doing here,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said last week.Kenny Holston/The New York Times

By Charlie Savage

Charlie Savage has written about national security and legal policy for more than two decades. He reported from Washington.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has made contempt for what he calls “stupid rules of engagement” — limits meant to reduce risks to civilians — central to his political identity, and has boasted that he unleashed the military to use “maximum authorities on the battlefield” in the Iran war.

“Our warfighters have maximum authorities granted personally by the president and yours truly,” Mr. Hegseth said at a briefing four days after the war started. “Our rules of engagement are bold, precise and designed to unleash American power, not shackle it.”

This and similar statements are now the backdrop to a body of evidence that the destruction of an Iranian elementary school during the opening hours of the war was likely caused by an American missile strike. The preliminary finding of an ongoing military investigation has determined that the United States was responsible, The New York Times has reported.

The destruction of the school, which coincided with an attack on an adjacent Iranian naval base, killed about 175 civilians, most of them children, according to Iranian officials.

Long before this war, Mr. Hegseth’s opposition to stricter versions of limits on what U.S. forces need to see and know about a potential target before they may open fire drew criticism. Retired commanders argue that the point of such constraints is not just law, morality and honor, but strategic self-interest. Mistakes that kill civilians stoke anti-Americanism — alienating allies, creating new enemies and making wars harder to win.

“You don’t want to turn the entire population against the United States,” said Mark Hertling, a retired three-star Army general. “If you are bombing indiscriminately — like may have happened on several occasions, to include the girls’ school — that would negate any opportunity to have a positive regime change.”

Pressed about the incident as the details have gradually come to light, Mr. Hegseth has repeatedly responded by saying the matter is under investigation and stressing that the United States does not target civilians.

“We’re certainly investigating,” Mr. Hegseth said on Saturday, for example, standing behind President Trump on Air Force One. “But the only — the only side that targets civilians is Iran.”

But the issue is not targeting civilians — such as a situation in which an armed force deliberately attacks a civilian building knowing full well what it is, because it wants and intends to kill civilians.

If the United States attacked the building under the mistaken belief that it was a military facility, the issue is instead how strict or lax the rules of engagement in Mr. Hegseth’s Pentagon were for identifying and verifying the nature of a potential target.

What standards of certainty were imposed on planners for the strikes for vetting and validating potential targets? Does Mr. Hegseth’s repeated statement that he gave the military “maximum authority on the battlefield,” compared with the practice in past wars, mean the standards were formally lowered? Whatever the rules were on paper, did such comments contribute to a culture of moving faster and with less care — of “no hesitation,” in his words — among the planners, resulting in negligence or recklessness?

The school was next door to an Iranian military base full of buildings that were destroyed by precision missile strikes. The school building was once part of that base, before it was fenced off between 2013 and 2016 and converted to civilian use. Officials familiar with the preliminary findings of the official investigation said the strike relied on outdated intelligence and questions remained about why it had not been double checked.

The Pentagon press office declined to comment, saying only that “the incident is under investigation.” It also declined to say who is conducting the investigation.

Usually, the Navy would perform an after-action review of strikes involving Tomahawks fired from a naval vessel, which would ultimately go to Mr. Hegseth for review and approval.

In theory, the Pentagon’s inspector general could conduct a more independent inquiry. But Mr. Trump last year fired the experienced watchdog there, and recently installed as a replacement a former political appointee from his first administration with no prior experience doing inspector general work, Platte B. Moring III.

Last month, Mr. Moring froze a staff proposal to evaluate targeting practices and procedures in the military attacks on boats the administration says are suspected of smuggling drugs, saying he wanted to consult department leadership. He also told staff that it sounded like such a project could be highly political, according to a person briefed on the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

His office noted it has not publicly announced any projects related to the Iran war operation and declined to comment on the status of the boat strike matter.

Challenging guardrails

“War is hell,” as Mr. Hegseth frequently points out. But traditionally, American military leadership has expressed concern about the risk of civilian casualties. Especially during the counterinsurgency efforts of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, when U.S. and allied commanders realized that winning local cooperation was key, they imposed rules of engagement that the military considered to be more restrictive than the minimum guardrails required by the laws of war.

The Pentagon’s own law-of-war manual states that the military, in planning and conducting attacks, must “in good faith based on the information available at the time, take feasible precautions to verify that the person or object is a military objective.” It also notes that “policymakers may choose to apply heightened standards of identification, greater than those required by the law of war, to reduce the risk of incidental harm in conducting an attack.”

Mr. Hegseth thinks differently. He has tried to reshape Pentagon culture, reveling in lethality with “no apologies, no hesitation.” He has portrayed this approach as a “warrior ethos,” one that is tough and manly.

He came up as an Army infantry officer and, as he wrote in his 2024 memoir “The War on Warriors,” loathed strict rules of engagement imposed to minimize risk to civilians, seeing heightened standards for when his platoon could open fire as putting soldiers at greater risk on the battlefield. He blamed judge advocate general lawyers, or JAGs, for such rules — even though it is commanders, not lawyers, who issue them.

Mr. Hegseth later continued that line of thinking as a Fox News contributor and host and as an advocate for U.S. service members charged with war crimes. In his 2024 book, he questioned the need to obey the Geneva Conventions and derisively referred to military lawyers as “jagoffs.”

After Mr. Trump appointed him to lead the Defense Department, Mr. Hegseth fired the top JAGs for the military services and shuttered Pentagon offices that focused on preventing and responding to civilian harm during U.S. combat operations.

For the first few days of the war in Iran, when details about the school strike were murky, Mr. Hegseth boasted at briefings about how he had dialed the rules of engagement down to a minimum.

Unlike traditional American allies “who wring their hands and clutch their pearls, hemming and hawing about the use of force,” he said on March 2, the United States was using force on its own terms “with maximum authorities — no stupid rules of engagement.”

It was two days later that he described his rules of engagement as unleashing, not shackling, American power, saying the pilots and operators conducting airstrikes were “controlling the skies, picking targets — death and destruction from the sky all day long.”

On March 5, he said that “the dumb, politically correct wars of the past were the opposite of what we’re doing here” because they were fought “with restrictive, minimalist rules of engagement,” but in this one, engagement authorities were “maxed out.”

But as more facts have emerged about the school, Mr. Hegseth has softened his tone. At a press briefing on Tuesday, while he still described the mission as “maximum authority,” he did not specifically mention more permissive rules of engagement. Instead, he emphasized and praised precautions to protect civilians.

“Seeing it from the inside every single day, including this, no nation takes more precautions to ensure there’s never targeting of civilians than the United States of America,” he said, adding: “No nation in the history of warfare has ever attempted in every way possible to avoid civilian casualties. And frankly, that’s a point that just isn’t appreciated enough.”

Charlie Savage writes about national security and legal policy for The Times.“