This file photo shows UN Human Rights Council in session.
The United States has formally withdrawn from the UN Human Rights Council, one day after a UN fact-finding mission said there are “reasonable grounds” to believe US forces committed war crimes in two strikes on civilian sites in Iran.
The US State Department announced that Washington has ended its membership and participation in the council, accusing the body of promoting what it called “anti-American rhetoric” and adopting an overly accommodating approach toward governments it accused of repressing their populations.
The decision came as the council is holding its 63rd regular session in Geneva, which began on September 7 and is scheduled to continue through October 7.
The withdrawal followed the publication of a report by the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran, which examined US conduct during its terrorist war on the country that began on February 28, 2026.
The UN-backed investigators said they have “reasonable grounds” to believe US forces are responsible for two attacks in Iran that amounted to indiscriminate attacks against civilians and civilian infrastructure.
One of the incidents involved a Tomahawk missile strike on the Shajareh Tayyebeh Primary School in the southern city of Minab.
The attack killed more than 160 people, including around 120 children.
The mission said the school was a clearly identifiable civilian facility and found no evidence that it was being used for military purposes at the time of the attack.
The investigators said the school displayed clear features identifying it as an educational facility for children, including school signs, child-oriented murals and playground areas.
They concluded that the United States had failed to take all feasible measures to verify that the site was a military objective before striking it.
The second incident occurred in the southern city of Lamerd, in Fars province, where the UN mission examined a US strike on a sports complex and nearby residential area.
The precision strike missiles dispersed tungsten pellets across the area, killing 22 civilians and damaging residential buildings and a sports complex.
The investigators concluded that the attack was also indiscriminate and constituted a war crime.
The report said the circumstances indicated that Washington acted while aware of a substantial risk of striking a civilian object, describing the conduct as going beyond mere negligence.
The findings have unabashedly been rejected by Washington. The White House and State Department dismissed the UN Human Rights Council’s assessment and questioned the credibility of its findings.
US Central Command has separately denied that American forces conducted a strike in Lamerd on the date examined by the mission.
However, the characteristics of the missiles that tore into the southern Iranian city and the ground around Lamerd’s Shahid Naeimi Sports Complex still bear the marks of one of the clearest examples of America’s disregard for civilian life and the laws of war.
The weapon has been promoted by its manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, as a long-range, highly precise system, while the US military announced that PrSMs had been used in Iran in what was described as a “historic first.”
Independent weapons experts have also linked the munition’s characteristics to the Lamerd strike.
A US official cited by The New York Times confirmed that the missile used in the attack was the PrSM and that the weapon was being tested in combat for the first time.
Airwars, weapons experts and journalists analyzing verified video and the pattern of destruction found characteristics consistent with the missile, including an airburst and the dispersal of large numbers of high-speed tungsten pellets.
The analysis found that civilians were killed as far as 50 meters from the points of detonation and that damage extended substantially farther.
Washington had already ordered its withdrawal from several UN bodies and said it would not seek membership on the Human Rights Council in the future.
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The Most Revolutionary Act 
The U.S. has never concerned itself with human rights. Look at it’s bloody history. Murdering Indians, enslaving human beings and calling them 3/5ths of a human, refusing to admit that chattel slavery was the worst human rights abuse in the 20th century. Bombing children in Philadelphia when the U.S. government bombed the MOVE headquarters, and so who is surprised that this shit hole targeted a school in Iran, thus murdering more children. Nothing this collapsing putrid monstrously hideous shit hole does surprises me! I only wish I could be surprised over what’s happening.
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