Trump’s ‘peace through strength’ stained with blood of innocent kids: Larijani

Iran’s top security official, Ali Larijani, has lashed out at the United States and Israel after a deadly airstrike on a school in southern Iran, telling US President Donald Trump that the slogan of “peace through strength” has been “stained with blood.”

In a post on X on Thursday, Larijani, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, condemned the brutal crime carried out by Washington and Tel Aviv.

“With the mass martyrdom of innocent girls in a Minab school at the hands of American-Israeli criminals, the theory of ‘peace through strength’ has been stained with blood,” he wrote.

Addressing the US president directly, Larijani added: “Mr. Trump! Was this the anthem of freedom you composed for Iran?! God exposes the deceivers by their own hand.”

The remarks came after a devastating strike on a primary school in the southern Iranian city of Minab that killed nearly 170 people, most of them children.

According to Iranian officials, multiple Israeli-American airstrikes targeted the two-story Shajareh Tayyebeh primary school on Saturday morning. Five air raids struck the girls’ and boys’ sections of the school at 11:30 a.m., followed hours later by another strike at 3:40 p.m. on a nearby clinic.

Dozens of female teachers and four parents were also among the victims.
The massacre occurred amid a broader escalation that began earlier the same day, when the United States and Israel launched an illegal act of aggression against Iran.

During the onslaught, Israeli-American strikes assassinated the Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, along with several high ranking military commanders.

Iranian officials say the wave of airstrikes has so far killed at least 1,045 people across the country.

In response, Iran’s armed forces began launching waves of missile and drone attacks against Israeli-occupied territories as well as US military assets in regional countries, describing the retaliation as a lawful response to aggression.

The latest escalation also comes against the backdrop of earlier statements by Trump, who had told Iranians that “help is on the way” after economic protests in January were hijacked by foreign intelligence networks and turned violent.