Iran uses global climate talks to highlight impact of US strike on Minab school

Iran is harnessing international climate talks in Turkey to highlight the impact of a deadly US missile strike on an elementary school, using an exhibition space typically focused on global warming to depict the incident.

The country’s national pavilion inside the United Nations-convened COP31 summit shows images of schoolchildren killed in the southern city of Minab and includes a mock classroom with strewn backpacks, desks and a chalkboard intended to look like the aftermath of the missile attack.

Also read: US-Iran war: Tehran says forces 'stronger' than at beginning of war

Visitors who don a virtual reality headset can also watch a four-minute film that depicts a fictional boy’s school day before the site was struck, and portrays US President Donald Trump as directly ordering the Feb. 28 attack.

An investigation into the incident is ongoing, and the United States does not target civilians, said a senior Trump administration official, who asked for anonymity because the inquiry isn’t public. The US government doesn’t have an official delegation at COP31 following the country’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement.

Top administration officials have denied intentionally targeting the school. Pentagon investigators discovered that flawed intelligence, outdated imagery and an overreliance on AI contributed to the attack, according to a Bloomberg News investigation. A report on the full US probe, which began in March, hasn’t been released — though officials said it’s been all-but-complete for several months, and the military command responsible for combat operations in the Middle East subsequently made changes to how it vets intelligence around possible targets.

More than 120 children were killed in the strike at the school, which was previously part of an Iranian military facility — one of 1,000 sites hit during the initial February barrage.

Also read: Trump says Iran war's 'militarily' over, but US 'locked and loaded'

The display at Iran’s pavilion, unlike almost all other national booths, has no overt link to the environment or climate change, focusing solely on the type of messaging Tehran has deployed on social media to counter US comments on the Minab incident and to take jabs at Trump.

Iran’s president Masoud Pezeshkian is scheduled to address delegates at the conference on Wednesday, alongside more than two dozen other heads of state.

Across the wider summit, delegates are invoking the increases in energy prices tied to conflicts in the Middle East and in Ukraine. “This year’s fossil fuel cost chaos has delivered a global shockwave, hitting households hard and spreading inflation,” UN climate change chief Simon Stiell told the summit Monday.

The price shocks are seen as offering additional impetus for efforts to transition away from fossil fuels, with nations making little progress on the task since pledging to do so at the 2023 COP28 in Dubai.

At its national pavilion, Ukraine plans to showcase its efforts to boost renewable energy amid Russian strikes on its power infrastructure.

The stand will include three-dimensional mockups of power plants built during the war, to underscore the importance of decentralized electricity supplies for hospitals and other critical infrastructure, said Svitlana Sushko, who leads the Reform and Recovery Support Team for Ukraine’s economy and environment ministry.

“We have brought a lot of solutions for crisis management and how we are doing climate policy” at a time of war, Sushko said.

Ukraine’s exhibition also includes references to damage suffered as a result of Russia’s invasion, including a puzzle made with fragments of war-ravaged buildings. Text panels describe conflict-related damage, including polluted water, oil seeping from sunken ships and high copper concentrations in some areas. A separate display underscores the deaths of dolphins in the Black Sea, which have been attributed to heavy use of military sonar and vessel noise.

Israel’s military offensive in Gaza is also being highlighted in the corridors of COP31. On Monday, a major venue at the conference site was dedicated to the state of Palestine and named “Gaza Hall”. While Palestine is recognized as a sovereign state by many UN-member countries, it isn’t a full member of the body.