UN mission suspects US of war crimes in Iran

Human rights experts commissioned by the UN’s top human rights body on Thursday said they have found “reasonable grounds” to believe the US committed war crimes in Iran.
The international fact-finding mission said its findings on US war crimes centered on a pair of airstrikes that killed at least 172 civilians, including women and children. 
The UN experts said US forces were responsible for an attack on the Shajareh Tayyebeh Primary School in the city of Minab, where more than 150 people were killed, including around 120 schoolchildren, according to Iranian officials.
The attack constituted an indiscriminate attack causing civilian deaths and damage to civilian infrastructure, amounting to a war crime under international law, the mission concluded.
According to the report, the US failure to update information in relation to the school, which was adjacent to an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps naval complex, in its targeting databases and to confirm the building was a military objective amounted to more than mere negligence.
"Rather, the US directed the strikes at the building of the school while being aware of a substantial risk of striking a civilian object and acting recklessly as regards the possibility that this would happen."
Experts said the school was a clearly identifiable civilian object and found no evidence that it was being used for military purposes.
The experts reached a similar conclusion over a strike on a sports centre in Lamerd. The report said the attack damaged nearby residential buildings and a school and killed and injured 22 civilians. It concluded that the strike was indiscriminate and therefore constituted a war crime.
US Central Command said in a statement in March that US forces did not launch any strikes into the city of Lamerd on that day. 
The UN mission probe also found that the Iranian authorities carried out a widespread and systematic attack against civilians during protests that erupted in late December last year, involving unlawful killings, torture, arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances and severe restrictions on freedom of expression. 
Meanwhile, attacks attributed to the Houthis, the Yemeni government and its Saudi backers killed at least five people on Thursday, as fighting rocked the Arabian Peninsula after the Iran-backed group made lightning gains in a fresh offensive. The three sides have been locked in increasingly violent exchanges since Yemen's civil war flared back to life, with Saudi Arabia accusing the Houthis of firing at the holy city of Mecca this week.
China has privately asked Tehran to help rein in Yemen's Houthis after an appeal to Beijing by Saudi Arabia following the Iran-backed group's military blitz in the past week, according to three Iranian sources familiar with the matter.
Riyadh turned to China for help after the Houthis made rapid advances along the Red Sea coast and around the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, moves that have left Saudi oil exports and shipping more exposed, the sources said.
China has publicly called for restraint, dialogue and the restoration of safe navigation, but its private message went further than the public statements, they said.
Beijing wants Iran to use its influence with the Houthis to help prevent the conflict spreading further across energy routes on which China, the world's second-largest economy, depends.
US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he hoped an end to the war against Iran was near and a media report separately said he is expected to meet Gulf leaders on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly on Tuesday to discuss the conflict.
His comments come with the Iran war in its seventh month and with no immediate end in sight.
Axios reported late on Wednesday Trump's meeting with Gulf leaders next week in New York is expected to focus on US plans for a postwar strategy.