WASHINGTON (AP) — Senators are seeking to block Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s travel funds until the Pentagon submits several overdue reports to lawmakers, including its investigation into a deadly strike on an elementary school in Iran at the start of the U.S.-Israeli war.According to an annual defense authorization bill, filed this week, much of the travel funds for the defense secretary’s office may not be spent until Hegseth submits “unredacted civilian harm investigations,” including for the Feb. 28, 2026, strike on the Minab school. Officials have preliminarily said the U.S. was responsible for the strike, which was blamed on outdated intelligence.Congress, which conducts oversight of the Pentagon, has not yet received the Defense Department’s report on the investigation. It is believed to have been completed last month. Sen. Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement that this year’s annual defense package “forces the Secretary to be more accountable to Congress and will prevent many errors of the past from being repeated in the future.”
Strike on elementary school became a flashpointThe bombing of the elementary school on the first day of the U.S. war against Iran killed more than 165 people, many of them children, at the campus adjacent to a Revolutionary Guard base. It quickly became a focal point of the conflict.Outdated intelligence likely led to the United States carrying out the missile strike, according to those familiar with the preliminary findings in March. If so, it would stand among the highest civilian casualty events caused by American military operations in the last two decades.Senators from both parties tucked the new provisions blocking Hegseth’s travel funds into the National Defense Authorization Act to force release of the investigation.
