By Zachary Cohen, CNN
(CNN) — The investigation into a US strike that hit a school in Iran has sat for months with a military command while leaders have held off on ordering a critical, standard intelligence review to help determine what happened, according to three sources familiar with the matter.
Within a week of the strike, the first two stages of a “battle damage assessment” focused on answering basic questions including whether the strike hit and damaged the intended target had been completed, indicating that the US was responsible for striking the Shajareh Tayyiba school in Minab, the sources said.
But a third standard review stage, a step where analysts – typically from the Defense Intelligence Agency – review the entire body of relevant satellite imagery and other intelligence sources to provide a more holistic determination about what took place and how a strike impacted the broader mission, was not ordered, the sources said. That review would almost always be conducted in the immediate aftermath of a noteworthy strike, they said, but it had not begun as of early July.
An independent investigation – announced in March – was separately launched, and interviews were conducted with service members involved with the strike. Sources said that the information gained from interviews, material that could be useful to commanders still launching strikes against Iran to avoid mistakes, has been “locked down” by US Central Command with only a handful of officers permitted access to the details.
“There was no detailed analysis conducted and CENTCOM locked down the investigation/blocked anyone from looking into it,” one of the sources said.
A Defense Department official told CNN that “the investigation is ongoing.”
“We have nothing further to announce at this moment,” the official added.
The sources said the investigation would help determine fault for the mistaken strike.
The decision to launch the investigation should not have precluded DIA from conducting the more thorough third phase of the review, the first source told CNN, adding “both could have happened at the same time if they chose to.”
An additional DIA review would not, in and of itself, have determined who was at fault but could have been used as evidence, the source added.
A US official told CNN that the internal Pentagon investigation was intended to supersede a traditional third phase assessment, and both could not happen at the same time because it was clear after the initial review that the incident required a thorough probe – by an independent body outside of CENTCOM and unattached to other agencies that would have had a role in the strike itself.
Once the independent investigation findings were submitted to CENTCOM back in April, the subsequent delay was due to a need to examine what happened even further, the official said, pointing to the fact that the failures contributing to the accidental strike went back years and involved multiple layers of potential missteps.
A week after the strike and after the initial two phases of review, evidence was already beginning to emerge that the US military had accidentally hit the elementary school due, at least in part, to outdated intelligence about the targeted site – which was believed to be an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps naval base, sources said.
Iranian state media said that 168 children and 14 adults died in the attack.
As of early July, the Pentagon had not asked the Defense Intelligence Agency to conduct the third and final phase of the battle damage assessment, a role the agency almost always ful