BBCPERSIAN — broadcast
20260915 160000 UTC
434 transcript segments
Google Cloud Speech-to-Text API (Chirp) + Gemini 2.5 Flash Non-Thinking
Data courtesy of The GDELT Project (https://www.gdeltproject.org/), from the Internet Archive TV News Archive.
Machine transcription. Treat it as a searchable index of what was broadcast, not a verbatim quotation record.

[00:00:30] Has this movement ended or is it still at its beginning?
[00:00:34] The anniversary of the Mahsa movement and the narrative of a
[00:00:38] changing society on BBC Persian uses fake names.
[00:00:41] Their phones are disposable and they remain hidden from view,
[00:00:45] not to escape the law, but to expose
[00:00:48] lawbreakers. They are
[00:00:52] BBC World Service reporters,
[00:00:55] and this is Global Eye from BBC.
[00:00:58] If the attack on the school was intentional,
[00:01:31] this is a clear violation of the principle of distinction.
[00:01:35] A missile strike
[00:01:37] destroyed the world of these children.
[00:01:40] This investigative report examines
[00:01:43] where this elementary school is,
[00:01:45] why it was targeted, and who is responsible for this
[00:01:49] attack in which 120 children were killed.
[00:01:52] Can Iran file a case of war crime in relation
[00:01:56] to the attack on this school? The windows of the house
[00:02:09] shattered. The sound of the explosion came from the school.
[00:02:13] I ran barefoot towards the school.
[00:02:17] When I got closer, smoke
[00:02:20] and fire were rising. I reached the girls'
[00:02:24] courtyard. Pieces of torn bodies
[00:02:28] were scattered everywhere.
[00:03:00] Asnat and Hesam were as usual. For
[00:03:03] 118 other students of Shajarah Elementary School and their
[00:03:07] teachers, it was also a normal morning. Mikail Mirdoqi,
[00:03:10] 9 years old and in third grade, puts his bag and water bottle
[00:03:14] on his shoulder and, when he says goodbye in the hallway
[00:03:18] to go to school, he asks his mother to take a picture
[00:03:21] of him.
[00:03:24] Fatemeh Rahdar is 11 years old and in fifth grade. One
[00:03:27] of her relatives told us
[00:03:30] that every day she travels 30 kilometers by shuttle from the village
[00:03:33] of Bandar Kolahi to reach school. Being a studious
[00:03:37] child, she wants to become a doctor. Samira
[00:03:41] Malleh, 11 years old and in fifth grade, and her brother
[00:03:44] Sadra have also gone to school. Samira
[00:03:48] loves to dance and wants to become
[00:03:50] a teacher.
[00:03:53] Mehdi Sanjari leaves home at 7:09 AM.
[00:03:57] His father, as always, takes him
[00:04:00] to school. Mahdiz is 7 years old and loves
[00:04:04] skateboarding.
[00:04:04] They
[00:04:08] reach their destination. This is Shajarah
[00:04:11] Tayebeh Elementary School in northern Minab, 20 kilometers
[00:04:15] from the shores
[00:04:16] of the Persian Gulf.
[00:04:19] Brothers and sisters, as always, separate in front
[00:04:23] of the school. Boys enter through this door
[00:04:26] and girls through this door. Here, in
[00:04:30] the 3D map, you can see that this elementary school has two separate
[00:04:34] courtyards for girls and boys.
[00:04:37] However, their building is the same. The boys' classes
[00:04:40] are on the first floor, and the girls' classes are on the second
[00:04:44] floor. After a few hours, the teachers
[00:04:48] gathered in the office for an emergency meeting.
[00:04:50] At 9:45 AM,
[00:04:54] Israel and America attacked Iran.
[00:04:58] The order to close schools is
[00:05:00] given. Teachers contact parents between
[00:05:03] 10:30 and a little after 11
[00:05:06] to come and pick up their children from school
[00:05:10] or send them home by shuttle.
[00:05:14] Parents rush
[00:05:16] towards the school in panic.
[00:05:19] At 1:12 PM,
[00:05:23] a missile targets the school building.
[00:05:26] The missile hits the second
[00:05:33] floor and the girls' classrooms,
[00:05:37] and the debris collapses on the boys' students
[00:05:41] on the lower floor. Therefore, the number of killed
[00:05:44] boys, which was 73, is more than the number of killed
[00:05:48] girls, which was announced as 47.
[00:05:51] Rescuers say that the officials had gathered the children
[00:05:55] in the prayer room, which was here, because
[00:05:58] they found many bodies under the debris in this area.
[00:06:01] Some of them, according to
[00:06:04] rescuers, were still in the arms
[00:06:06] of their teachers.
[00:06:14] I was stunned and confused, not knowing where to go to find
[00:06:18] the children. I turned my head towards the girls'
[00:06:21] office.
[00:06:23] Thick smoke and fire were coming out of the window. I thought maybe
[00:06:27] my children had gone into the office out of fear.
[00:06:30] I called out their names again with all my might.
[00:06:33] They were not there.
[00:06:36] The more I looked for my children, the more despairing
[00:06:39] I became. The school that day was soaked
[00:06:43] in blood, flesh, fire, smoke, and gunpowder.
[00:06:47] All the terrified people were looking for their children.
[00:06:49] The bodies
[00:06:52] of Asnat and Hesam were found the next day in the morgue.
[00:06:56] Their bodies were intact and identifiable. But
[00:07:00] the bodies of many of these children, due to
[00:07:03] being dismembered, were identified only by DNA testing. Makan
[00:07:07] Nasiri, 7 years old, was the only child of whom not
[00:07:11] a single trace remained. He was declared missing,
[00:07:14] so it is believed that the missile directly
[00:07:17] hit him. Parents say that the attack
[00:07:21] on Shajarah Tayebeh Elementary School is a war crime.
[00:07:24] But can Iran file a war crime case
[00:07:27] at the International Criminal Court
[00:07:31] regarding the attack on this school?
[00:07:33] If the attack on the school was intentional,
[00:07:37] meaning that the American decision-makers targeted the school
[00:07:41] because it was a school, this is a clear
[00:07:44] violation of the principle of distinction,
[00:07:48] meaning a violation of the distinction between
[00:07:51] military and civilian targets. A violation of the principle
[00:07:55] of distinction is considered a war crime.
[00:07:57] If the targeters really reasonably believed
[00:08:01] that the target was a military target, even in that case,
[00:08:04] it is difficult to say that the attack violated the principles
[00:08:07] of distinction and proportionality. What has almost
[00:08:10] certainly been violated is the principle of precaution,
[00:08:14] a principle that requires the parties involved
[00:08:17] to take all possible measures to ensure the military nature
[00:08:21] of the target.
[00:08:24] However, it is not entirely out of the question that the prosecutor will try
[00:08:28] to prove that in cases of severe negligence,
[00:08:31] for example, an attack carried out without any information
[00:08:35] about the target, or based on obvious
[00:08:39] outdated or incomplete information, criminal responsibility will also be raised.
[00:08:47] This school was established 10 years ago in the northeast of a complex
[00:08:51] belonging to the IRGC Navy and has been separated
[00:08:54] from this complex by a wall ever since. Many
[00:08:57] media outlets outside Iran have referred to this complex
[00:09:01] as an IRGC military base, but locals told BBC Persian
[00:09:05] that this complex was previously the base of the Asef Brigade
[00:09:08] of the IRGC Navy, but for many years it has no longer been a military
[00:09:12] base. Its buildings have been repurposed.
[00:09:16] Satellite images show that at least 3 years ago, the two
[00:09:19] guard towers that were in these corners were removed.
[00:09:23] And only one guard tower remains here, which
[00:09:26] one of the locals told us has been abandoned for years.
[00:09:29] This CCTV video,
[00:09:33] which the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs released in early
[00:09:37] April, provides important details of the attack.
[00:09:40] With the shadows in this video and other videos from the moments
[00:09:44] after the impact, we concluded
[00:09:48] that the approximate time of the attacks was in the morning and afternoon
[00:09:52] of March 9th. In the first wave, which occurred between
[00:09:55] 11 AM and 12 PM, the school was targeted.
[00:09:59] In this video, we see that within 50
[00:10:02] seconds, at least 9 missiles hit this complex.
[00:10:06] An examination of the geographical location of the impact points
[00:10:09] shows that in the 10th second, four.
[00:10:18] In the second wave, between 2 and 3 PM, three missiles hit
[00:10:22] here. A geographical analysis shows that
[00:10:25] these missiles hit the buildings of the Absalan clinic and its surroundings.
[00:10:29] These buildings had been evacuated and no casualties were
[00:10:32] reported. The Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs
[00:10:36] has not specified whether all the attacks
[00:10:39] on the school and the IRGC complex
[00:10:42] are shown in these images or not.
[00:10:44] The Martyr Absalan Clinic of the IRGC Navy
[00:10:48] was opened in this complex about two years ago.
[00:10:52] We have found that these warehouses that were destroyed
[00:10:56] in the missile attack are the cultural
[00:10:59] cooperative stores. On this side of the complex,
[00:11:03] there is also a car wash called Persian Gulf with a separate
[00:11:06] entrance and a sign installed on Resalat Boulevard.
[00:11:10] It is said that this warehouse, which was completely destroyed,
[00:11:13] was a children's playhouse, and this destroyed building
[00:11:17] was the clinic's warehouse. We have not been able
[00:11:20] to independently confirm the use of these two locations.
[00:11:23] Here is also a football field. This warehouse,
[00:11:27] which is only a few hundred meters from the school, was destroyed
[00:11:30] in the missile attack. This small building,
[00:11:33] whose entrance is on Resalat Boulevard, is a coffee shop called
[00:11:36] Sunset.
[00:11:39] In these satellite images, we see that these
[00:11:42] buildings were severely damaged in the missile
[00:11:45] attacks. In our investigations, we found
[00:11:49] no signs of military activities in this area belonging
[00:11:52] to the IRGC Navy. Therefore,
[00:11:56] if we assume that this was not a military base,
[00:11:59] can we assume that the missiles hit this
[00:12:03] location due to an error, and the target was somewhere
[00:12:06] else nearby? We searched the area around
[00:12:10] this school and outside the IRGC Navy compound
[00:12:13] using satellite images. As you can see, this area
[00:12:17] is full of buildings, residential, and commercial complexes.
[00:12:21] We were only able to identify an IRGC base
[00:12:25] about one kilometer to the south. Therefore,
[00:12:29] it does not seem that the main target was somewhere
[00:12:32] else nearby. Another
[00:12:35] reason that rejects the missile error hypothesis is that
[00:12:38] all military experts to whom we showed these images
[00:12:42] believe that these missiles are Tomahawks, among
[00:12:46] the most advanced and accurate long-range cruise missiles,
[00:12:49] with an error margin of 5 to 10
[00:12:53] meters. The Tomahawk
[00:12:55] missile
[00:12:59] is exclusively owned by the US. Therefore, the US military must specify why this school was attacked.
[00:13:02] However, the US has not yet claimed responsibility
[00:13:06] for this attack. We asked the Pentagon several times
[00:13:10] what was the reason for the attack on this complex,
[00:13:13] but each time they gave us the same answer that
[00:13:16] the US Secretary of Defense
[00:13:18] repeatedly gave to reporters and
[00:13:23] Democratic senators.
[00:13:27] This is despite the fact that former US military officer
[00:13:30] and expert in precision targeting in warfare,
[00:13:33] who worked at the Pentagon's Center for Excellence in Civilian
[00:13:37] Protection, believes that if the Pentagon
[00:13:41] had not confirmed that the Minab attack was their responsibility,
[00:13:45] they would not have started the investigation at all. According
[00:13:48] to Mr. Bryant, the very fact that the US military
[00:13:52] has started the investigation indicates that
[00:15:25] it is necessary for this target to be attacked, and then the most
[00:15:28] important stage, especially in the case of an attack on a school,
[00:15:32] is to examine the civilian environment and what is
[00:15:35] called the pattern of civilian presence around the target.
[00:15:39] After that, a risk assessment
[00:15:41] of collateral damage and civilian casualties is carried out.
[00:15:45] And then, if all these stages
[00:15:49] are completed and the decision to continue the attack
[00:15:52] is still made, the status of the target
[00:15:55] must be re-examined as close as possible
[00:15:59] to the actual time of the attack, not only to ensure that
[00:16:03] it is still a military target, but also to assess the status
[00:16:06] of civilians around that location.
[00:16:11] According to official statistics, in the attack on this school,
[00:16:15] 120 students, 26 school officials and teachers, one of whom
[00:16:19] was 6 months pregnant, one service driver,
[00:16:23] one citizen, and 7 parents were killed.
[00:16:26] I lost
[00:16:29] two of my children together, on the same day, at the same moment. Time
[00:16:33] stopped
[00:16:35] for me right there.
[00:16:38] My children were full of big goals, full of enthusiasm and hope
[00:16:42] for the future. It's a great shame.
[00:16:45] According
[00:16:55] to official statistics, 30 of these children,
[00:16:58] like Asnat and Hesam, were siblings.
[00:17:00] Mahya
[00:17:04] and Ali Salari, however, were sisters.
[00:17:21] Now, only the father remains from this family of four.
[00:18:31] I tell you that I will not play with hijab under any circumstances.
[00:18:34] We still exist. Being banned
[00:18:38] from working in the Ministry of Guidance of the Islamic Republic
[00:18:41] does not mean elimination to me at all.
[00:19:08] Isfahan, December
[00:19:10] 2023 protests,
[00:19:12] a year
[00:19:14] of protests that led to the arrest
[00:19:17] of 16 defendants in the case known as Imam Hossein Square
[00:19:21] in Isfahan. Defendants who are all between 20
[00:19:25] and 30 years old. The first branch of the Isfahan
[00:19:28] Revolutionary Court has now issued death sentences
[00:19:32] for 10 of these defendants at the preliminary stage.
[00:19:36] These are the charges considered for the defendants
[00:19:39] in this case: Moharebeh (enmity against God), aiding in Moharebeh,
[00:19:43] destruction of public property in the حكم
[00:19:46] of Moharebeh, incitement, assembly and collusion, and propaganda
[00:19:49] against the system in connection with the December
[00:19:52] 2023 protests.
[00:19:55] Taraneh Rahimi, Navid Elyasi, Abolfazl
[00:19:58] Dadgostar, Mehdi Mansouri, Ahmadreza
[00:20:01] Saeedi, Mehrdad Boueri, Mohammad Mahdi
[00:20:04] Asadi, Armin Gholami, Parsa Jafari,
[00:20:07] and Mehdi Jafari are the 10 people who have been sentenced to death.
[00:20:11] Romina Rahimi and Milad Boueri have each
[00:20:15] been sentenced to 25 years in prison. Hamed Mehrlian
[00:20:18] to 15 years, Setayesh Saeedi, Sajjad Abedi, and
[00:20:22] Ali Boueri have each been sentenced to 5 years
[00:20:25] in prison. Most of them are employees of shoe
[00:20:29] stores in Imam Hossein Square in Isfahan. Some
[00:20:32] sources told the BBC that during the court session,
[00:20:36] a photo of Colonel Kamrani was displayed,
[00:20:39] an IRGC colonel whom Iranian news agencies have referred
[00:20:43] to as a martyr defending security and said that he was killed
[00:20:47] on January 8th in the Isfahan protests. However,
[00:20:50] a well-informed source told the BBC that the murder of Mr. Kamrani
[00:20:54] and another person who was killed that night has not been directly
[00:20:58] attributed to any of the defendants. Witnesses say
[00:21:01] these two people were killed in a place that was some
[00:21:05] distance from Imam Hossein Square in Isfahan, and the court
[00:21:09] has not provided any evidence linking the defendants to their murders.
[00:21:12] A well-informed source told the BBC that this case has fundamental
[00:21:16] flaws and many ambiguities. One of them is the limited
[00:21:20] access to the file. Also, there is a lot of evidence that shows
[00:21:23] that the confessions made during interrogation were not true
[00:21:27] and were obtained under
[00:21:29] pressure, abuse, and torture.
[00:21:32] The UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Iran
[00:21:35] said a few months ago that the Islamic Republic has used execution to intimidate
[00:21:39] opponents and protesters during war and truce.
[00:21:42] The Iran Human Rights Organization reported that since
[00:21:46] March 19, 2023,
[00:21:49] at least 27 people related to the December protests
[00:21:52] have been executed. Most of these individuals
[00:21:56] were forced to make statements against themselves under pressure
[00:22:00] and torture and were deprived of basic prisoner rights.
[00:22:04] Farin Hashemi, BBC.
[00:22:05] At the same time as the real war
[00:22:12] that was going on in various cities of Iran and several
[00:22:15] other involved countries, another war was taking place in the cyber space.
[00:22:21] A war between fake and real, a war between
[00:22:25] doubt about visual documents and trust in them. Ali
[00:22:28] Mardani from Witness Institute has been working on this AI
[00:22:32] risk for a long time. This war that has been going
[00:22:36] on in Iran and several other countries in the region
[00:22:40] has coincided with the availability of AI tools. Perhaps
[00:22:43] it can be said that this is the first big war and the biggest
[00:22:47] war that we have witnessed since the popularization of AI.
[00:22:50] Now, access and the amount of AI content
[00:22:53] have become much higher than the other war we were
[00:22:57] talking about. It seems that the investment of both
[00:23:01] sides of the war or several sides of the war
[00:23:04] in these tools has also increased. You see, whenever there has been
[00:23:07] war in world history, we have always
[00:23:10] seen propaganda from all
[00:23:13] sides, and now this propaganda
[00:23:16] with AI has another effect and...
[00:23:20] We have really reached a point where it is very
[00:23:23] difficult for ordinary people to distinguish what is real and what
[00:23:27] is not real. We see that
[00:23:31] a lot of believable content is being created. When
[00:23:35] a user sees such convincing content,
[00:23:38] what can be expected of them to be able
[00:23:41] to distinguish real content from AI content?
[00:23:45] It has become very difficult, and we are
[00:23:49] seeing that
[00:23:51] when you talk to very professional people,
[00:23:55] with people who do fact-checking
[00:23:58] professionally, everyone is saying that
[00:24:02] the number has increased so much
[00:24:04] and its reality has also gone up so much that
[00:24:08] it has become very difficult, and there is a great need
[00:24:11] for responsibility to be on those who have power in this
[00:24:15] space, from AI models that create content
[00:24:19] to transparency systems. They are in the model itself,
[00:24:23] and now we don't see companies saying that they are trying
[00:24:26] to label and do different
[00:24:30] things. In such a way that it cannot be done, and it is not enough,
[00:24:33] meaning that information about the reality of content
[00:24:37] is not enough. The speed
[00:24:40] with which lies spread in cyberspace, don't you see
[00:24:44] that lies spread faster? Lies not only spread
[00:24:48] faster, they also get bought faster
[00:24:51] than reality, because some people are waiting
[00:24:54] to believe that fake or fabricated content.
[00:24:58] That's exactly how it is. We all have our own beliefs,
[00:25:02] and when
[00:25:04] fake content matches our beliefs,
[00:25:08] it's easier to accept it. And in
[00:25:12] the toxic environment we see in Iran, we ourselves
[00:25:16] know that this toxic information environment has been created
[00:25:19] by the Islamic Republic for 47 years. Before the internet and
[00:25:23] after the internet, to control information, and through
[00:25:26] the media or through the internet, it's such
[00:25:30] that any information coming out of Iran, if it's connected
[00:25:34] to the regime itself, we can easily understand
[00:25:38] why people don't believe it. But in
[00:25:41] an environment like this, where there is a war
[00:25:44] and people are in danger, not knowing what is real
[00:25:47] and what is not real
[00:25:50] can put people's lives in great danger. The fact
[00:25:54] that people doubt what is really happening to them can
[00:25:57] threaten their lives. Exactly.
[00:26:01] I myself am in Iran, I am in Iranian society,
[00:26:04] and I see how those around me
[00:26:07] always ask me, "Is this real? What
[00:26:11] should we believe now? Did they really hit this building?
[00:26:14] Are they really killing civilians?" In this human
[00:26:18] rights work, where we are always looking for documents
[00:26:22] to record crimes
[00:26:25] against human rights, it has become very difficult,
[00:26:29] especially in this environment where everyone doubts
[00:26:33] us. We are now in the middle of this war,
[00:26:37] a while after one of the most unprecedented
[00:26:39] moments in Iran's history, where thousands of people
[00:26:43] were killed by the Islamic Republic, and the information
[00:26:47] environment at that time, access
[00:26:49] to documents of those crimes was very difficult
[00:26:53] because of what the Islamic Republic did, from cutting
[00:26:57] off the internet, from threatening
[00:27:00] the families of the victims, arresting people who were filming.
[00:27:04] That is, they were censoring our access
[00:27:07] to documents in every way. Now we are in
[00:27:10] a situation where civilians are dying in this war,
[00:27:14] and the Islamic Republic is doing its best
[00:27:17] to prevent us from having access to documents.
[00:27:21] That is, through the government and state
[00:27:25] media, they are sending photographers.
[00:27:28] It is understandable that people doubt
[00:27:40] this content. How much does this internet outage
[00:27:43] and prevention of people's access to content publication
[00:27:47] affect people's resorting to AI and similar
[00:27:51] tools to doubt any content that is coming out? Israel
[00:27:55] is a very big factor in this space and knows
[00:27:58] what kind of content the people
[00:28:02] of Iran, who are fed up with the Islamic Republic,
[00:28:05] will buy. And in a place where we cannot hear
[00:28:09] the real voice of the Iranian people, this
[00:28:11] content can easily take its place and be believable.
[00:28:15] We saw content from
[00:28:18] the Ekbatan building where the Israeli
[00:28:21] flag was projected with light onto the building,
[00:28:25] and we easily realized that it was made
[00:28:29] with AI. But you see, in an environment
[00:28:32] where the Islamic Republic is silencing the voice of the Iranian
[00:28:36] people, such content will be bought,
[00:28:40] and this is how we see AI filling
[00:28:43] the gap of this outage and these censors.
[00:28:47] That is, the internet outage and censorship that is currently
[00:28:50] being imposed on the majority of Iranians here
[00:28:53] is also damaging the image that Iranians can
[00:28:56] see of what is happening in their country. Exactly. In this
[00:29:00] space, we see, for example, a country like Israel
[00:29:04] can fill this content gap with fake content.
[00:29:57] This is BBC Persian Radio. Jam-e-Jahanama,
[00:30:00] a live look at the most important
[00:30:03] news and events in Iran
[00:30:05] and the world.
[00:30:12] Stay with us for the latest developments.
[00:30:15] Jam-e-Jahanama
[00:30:19] with you.
[00:30:22] This is London,
[00:30:26] 8 PM Tehran. Headlines:
[00:30:30] World economy worried about escalating crisis
[00:30:33] in the Strait of Hormuz and Bab-el-Mandeb. Saudi Arabia
[00:30:36] has promised a decisive response to Houthi attacks.
[00:30:40] Iran says that equations related to oil and the straits
[00:30:43] have changed. Confirmation of a shortage
[00:30:46] of strategic weapons due to the war with Iran
[00:30:50] in a report published by the US Department of Defense's
[00:30:53] Inspector General. Trump had repeatedly
[00:30:57] denied concerns about declining weapons stockpiles,
[00:31:01] the news agency