The Trump administration systematically dismantled the Pentagon’s civilian harm mitigation program throughout 2025, leaving U.S. forces without safeguards that might have prevented the Minab school strike, according to a ProPublica investigation published March 10.
The program, established in 2022 as Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response (CHMR), had embedded some 200 personnel across regional commands by early 2025. Under it, detailed civilian mapping and no-strike list verification would have begun months before any Iran campaign was authorized. The school at Minab—located yards from a Revolutionary Guard naval base but marked on maps as a civilian facility since at least 2013—would have been flagged.