Senior United States military commanders, operating under Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth's drive for rapid action, overrode database warnings about severely outdated intelligence to approve a wave of initial bombings in Iran on 28 February, a decision that led to a strike on a school that killed nearly 200 civilians, according to three sources familiar with the targeting process.
Hegseth has repeatedly expressed a desire to allow battlefield commanders to operate faster by removing bureaucratic constraints, an approach he summarised as requiring 'maximum lethality, not tepid legality'.
