Massie Is Giving Over 300 Civilian War Dead a Voice In Hegseth's Impeachment
The charges against the secretary of defense include his negligent attack on an Iranian school and his deliberate attacks on drowning Caribbean sailors. That’s important.
One of the U.S. government's worst attacks on civilians happened in the opening shot of the Iran war. On the morning of February 28, 2026, two or three Tomahawk missiles smashed into the Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School in Minab, Iran. The bombing killed between 150 and 200 civilians, including students, teachers, and parents.
The outgoing, libertarian-leaning Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.) wants justice for those children. He is attempting to force a vote on impeaching Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and his fourth article of impeachment mentions the Minab air raid, arguing that Hegseth "effected the murder of civilians and abused the trust of the men and women under his command."
The charge doesn't accuse Hegseth of specifically plotting to murder those schoolchildren. But it argues that such massacres were the "foreseeable consequences" of Hegseth's choices. Hegseth had shut down Pentagon offices dedicated to tracking and preventing civilian harm and publicly attacked "stupid rules of engagement" holding the military back.
The fifth article of impeachment accuses Hegseth of "extrajudicial killings" for his attacks on boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, which have killed at least 240 sailors. The Trump administration began blowing up suspected smugglers in September 2025, and Hegseth reportedly ordered troops to gun down shipwrecked survivors. Some of the people targeted in these attacks were likely innocent.
Even for those guilty of smuggling, "Secretary Hegseth arrogated to himself and the Executive Branch the roles of judge, jury, and executioner and asserted a unilateral power to determine who may live and who may die," Massie declared.
The massacres of noncombatants are not the only illegal action that Massie accuses Hegseth of. The first, second, third, sixth, seventh, and eighth articles of impeachment concern making war on other countries without congressional approval. The sixth accuses Hegseth of "suppressing free speech." But the fourth and fifth articles would send an important message. Hegseth would be the most significant senior American official held accountable for killing civilians in living memory.
"As to the claim that the American military targets civilians, well, that is a lie, and that is a slander," Hegseth said in a Tuesday morning press conference about the impeachment. "The only people who target civilians are the terrorists that we hunt, and I will dignify this claim no further."
Hegseth, of course, was happy to beat his chest about unrestrained violence for months. He only changed his tune—indignant at the suggestion that he doesn't respect limits—after it became clear that the violence had gone too far and could land Hegseth in trouble.
"No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement, just common sense, maximum lethality and authority for warfighters," Hegseth told a gathering of generals and admirals in September 2025. His department bragged about its boat attacks, showing off videos of unarmed speedboats being blown up. But when reports emerged that Hegseth ordered an attack on drowning survivors, he suddenly insisted that the footage couldn't be released for security reasons.
The Minab massacre made Hegseth look worse than callous: It made him look incompetent.
The Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School was built on what used to be Iranian military property. In 2014, the Iranian military closed its barracks on the site and gave away the buildings to establish a civilian clinic and a school. A U.S. military analyst had reportedly figured out that the building was now at school, but U.S. commanders went with an old target list and ignored warnings that it was outdated.
"There's no fog of war on the first day! You've had months to identify these targets, yet they picked a school building on a school day with kids in it, and then struck it again, and then struck it again," Massie told reporters outside the Capitol on Monday afternoon.
At the outbreak of the war, teachers at Shajareh Tayyebeh tried to evacuate the school, calling parents to come pick up their children. They rushed the students back inside at the sound of aid raids erupting in Minab. Hossniyeh Salem was huddling under a desk with her preschoolers when a missile hit the school directly. "I didn't think they were going to strike the school. I just thought that some place had been hit," she recalled to Drop Site News. Then another missile hit and collapsed the roof.
Salem's own son had his leg cut by the glass. "Just don't take me to the hospital. Mama, they're going to hit the hospital and blow it up," he told her. Minab Fire Chief Mehrab Zakeri described a three-day search for victims, with "pieces of the students' and teachers' remains" stuck to firefighters' clothes, to Drop Site. The attack killed 156 people total, including 120 children, according to Drop Site. Other sources place the death count higher.
"In times of war, you expect the wounded to be military forces, but on the day of the incident, in the beginning, we only saw victims who were school children," local hospital director Mohammad Movarekh told Drop Site.
The Trump administration gave shifting, contradictory, and downright lying excuses for the attack. President Donald Trump first claimed that the attack was "done by Iran." When video evidence emerged that Minab was hit by Tomahawk missiles—which are only owned by the U.S. and four U.S. allies—Trump lied that "a Tomahawk is very generic" and Iran could have used them.
Hegseth then claimed that Iran was "fir[ing] missiles from schools and hospitals." Adm. Bradley Cooper later told Congress that the Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School "is located on an active [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] cruise missile base." The only Iranian military facilities anywhere near the school are barracks and an administrative office.
When Rep. Ro Khanna (D–Calif.) pressed Hegseth about the attack at a hearing, Hegseth accused Khanna of "playing gotcha questions." He can't be so cavalier anymore. Even if Massie fails in his impeachment attempt, which is expected to move forward on Tuesday afternoon, Democrats will have enough seats in January to try and succeed again. But it also matters whether he is impeached specifically for the killing of innocents, rather than some other procedural matter.
"Maybe people in America—many people around the world—have sympathized with the people of Minab, empathized with us," Salem, the preschool teacher, told Drop Site. "We are very grateful for them."