SPECIAL REPORT - September 17, 2026 - Eastern Time
Not a Day letter.

Dear Delaware,

On September 17, the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran - a United Nations Human Rights Council-mandated body of experts - published findings that demand plain English, not slogans.

The Mission found reasonable grounds to believe the United States committed the war crime of launching indiscriminate attacks resulting in civilian death, injury, or damage to civilian objects. The findings center on a pair of February 28 airstrikes: Tomahawk strikes on the Shajareh Tayyebeh Primary School in Minab, and Precision Strike Missiles dispersing tungsten pellets over a sports complex and residential area in Lamerd - a Lamerd allegation CENTCOM has denied. The Mission attributes at least 178 civilians killed across those two incidents, including women and children - figures drawn from the Mission's reporting and Iranian official accounts. There is still no final public accounting of every death.

Hear me carefully: this is not a court conviction. The Associated Press notes that Fact-Finding Mission reports are not binding. No tribunal has found the United States "guilty" of war crimes. What we have is a UN-mandated investigative standard - reasonable grounds to believe - headed for presentation to the 47-member Human Rights Council in Geneva. That is serious. It is not a verdict.

I will not soft-pedal civilian harm. I will not pretend forever war is free. And I will not launder contested facts into locked guilt. Delaware deserves the record as it stands.

A Human Rights Council fact-finding mission is not the International Criminal Court. It does not try defendants or issue sentences. Its mandate - created in 2022 and extended in January 2026 - investigates serious violations under an evidentiary threshold: reasonable grounds to believe.

Heavier than a press release. Lighter than a criminal judgment. The Mission's chair, jurist Sara Hossain, and her colleagues will present to the Council. The United States owes answers - not spin.

The Mission's strongest language on U.S. conduct lands on Minab.

According to the UN experts and OHCHR's release, Tomahawk missiles struck a clearly identifiable primary school - Shajareh Tayyebeh - on the opening day of U.S. and Israeli attacks, February 28. The Mission reports the strike killed over 150 people, including approximately 120 girls and boys. Iranian officials and state media have cited similar high child tolls; wire reporting notes those tallies are attributed, not independently finalized.

The Mission did not describe Minab as an accidental miss on a neighboring Revolutionary Guard compound. Associated Press reporting on the findings says experts concluded the school building was the intended point of impact, and that the United States directed strikes at the school while aware of a substantial risk of striking a civilian object and acting recklessly as to that possibility. Investigators, as summarized by the Guardian and ABC, found no evidence the school was being used for military purposes and reported that U.S. forces relied on intelligence suggesting a senior Iranian commander was present but failed to adequately verify.

That is one frame: intended aimpoint, reckless disregard, civilian object.

Here is the other - and I will not erase it. President Trump said in June that "nobody" purposefully attacked a girls' school and pointed to an investigation. Media reporting, including CBS citing a person briefed on an internal military assessment, has said the United States was "likely" responsible for Minab but did not intentionally target it - with dated intelligence cited as part of that internal picture. The Pentagon elevated a probe; no preliminary findings have been published. The Mission itself reported that June requests to the United States for information and meetings went unanswered.

Two stories about intent. One school full of dead children as the Mission and Iranian sources describe it. An accountability gap big enough to drive a forever war through.

The second named U.S. finding concerns Lamerd.

OHCHR reports Precision Strike Missiles dispersed clouds of tungsten pellets over a clearly identifiable sports complex and residential area, killing 22 civilian men and women. The Mission folds Lamerd into the same "reasonable grounds" finding of indiscriminate attack.

CENTCOM has denied launching any strikes into Lamerd that day - a March statement carried by AP, Guardian, ABC, and NBC. That denial does not erase the Mission's finding, and I will not bury it. Contested facts stay contested until a court or a transparent investigation settles them. We do not have either yet.

The same Mission did not spare Tehran.

OHCHR's framing is blunt: civilians are caught between gross human rights violations and crimes against humanity committed by their own Government and the nation's deadly conflict with the United States and Israel. The experts find that Iran's protest crackdown - late December 2025 onward - included unlawful killings, torture, arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances, a nationwide internet blackout lasting more than five months from January 8, and an escalation of the death penalty. Many of those violations, the Mission says, amount to crimes against humanity as part of a widespread or systematic attack.

Killings by state security forces are described on a staggering scale across all 31 provinces. OHCHR cites at least 221 children reportedly killed in the crackdown context; at least 29 men executed March-August 2026 in connection with protests; and 70-plus at imminent risk of execution. The Guardian notes the Mission could not independently verify the overall protest death toll; official figures cited run to 3,038 killed and 25,000 injured, with the Mission believing the true numbers are probably far higher.

A candidate who only quotes the American half of a UN report is doing politics, not accountability. Civilians trapped between a repressive state and a foreign war deserve both truths on the page.

Other allegations sit near this story. They are not the September 17 "reasonable grounds" pair. Language matters.

Amnesty International investigated U.S. and Israeli strikes on Tehran neighborhoods - Niloufar, Resalat, and Javadieh in March - and reported at least 41 civilians killed by wide-area explosive weapons in dense urban areas. Amnesty said those strikes "may constitute indiscriminate attacks and amount to war crimes." That is an NGO allegation - may constitute - not the UN Fact-Finding Mission's September 17 finding. Different standard. Different weight.

On September 14, after reported U.S. airstrikes that destroyed a residential home in Qeshm (July 30) and hit a house during wedding celebrations in Kuhestak (September 1), the same Mission used weaker cautionary language: failure to respect international humanitarian law "may give rise to international responsibility, including for war crimes." Iranian media, as cited by the Mission, described family deaths including children. That Sep 14 phrasing is not the Feb 28 Minab/Lamerd "reasonable grounds" conclusion published September 17 (and again: CENTCOM denies the Lamerd strikes).

One more precision: the Mission describes United States and Israeli attacks on February 28, then attributes the war-crime finding on the two named strikes to the United States. I will not casually merge that into a slogan about a "U.S.-Israeli war crimes conviction." There is no conviction - only a U.S.-attributed investigative finding beside a shared opening-day military frame.

I will not invent U.S. hospital or power-plant bombings the sources do not establish. Where OHCHR documents attacks on healthcare facilities in this package, the conduct described is by Iranian security forces against protesters and medical workers - not U.S. airstrikes on hospitals.

Days before this report, Hormuz produced another dual narrative - already shipped as a breaking flash; still the teaching moment.

Iranian official / Mehr frame: two fishing boats hit in a drone attack near Larak Island and Kargan; fishermen missing; SAR underway (Hormozgan deputy governor Ahmad Nafisi).

U.S. / Axios + CENTCOM frame: IRGC small boats tried to seize a U.S. Navy unmanned surface vessel; U.S. forces responded; an American drone fired two missiles; boats destroyed. CENTCOM Capt. Tim Hawkins: they "attempted to take possession of a U.S. unmanned surface vessel," and "CENTCOM forcefully responded." The surface drone remains under U.S. operational control.

I will not settle pirates versus murdered fishermen. Both frames stand as reported. That maritime incident is not part of the September 17 Fact-Finding Mission war-crimes pair. Fog of war - cheaper than truth for forever-war politics.

Separately, the administration has seized tankers under a sanctions-and-forfeiture theory - including the M/T Skipper off Venezuela (around December 10, 2025), with DOJ later seeking forfeiture of the vessel and roughly 1.8 million barrels of crude, alleging an IRGC-benefit scheme. Follow-on seizures of other sanctioned or Venezuela-linked vessels continued into 2026.

Say this out loud: tanker seizures and sanctions enforcement are not the Fact-Finding Mission's international humanitarian law findings. Different bucket - money, sovereignty, shadow fleets, diplomatic protest. Equating a DOJ forfeiture with a UN war-crimes investigation is propaganda. We will not do it.

As of overnight September 17 reporting, the State Department did not immediately respond to AP. White House and Pentagon silence tracked the same pattern elsewhere. U.S. officials have previously said operations followed the law of armed conflict. Trump's June denial of purposeful school targeting sits beside an elevated Pentagon probe with no published preliminary findings, and beside the Mission's note that information requests to Washington went unanswered.

Process is policy. When UN experts ask questions and get silence - when a school-strike probe never sees daylight, when CENTCOM denies Lamerd and the Mission names Lamerd anyway - Delaware is asked to fund the missiles and trust the fog. That is blank-check government, not constitutional gravity.

I am a former travel ICU nurse and a people-funded write-in candidate for U.S. Senate. I do not sit as a war-crimes court. Neither does a campaign newsletter.

What a Senator does do is decide whether America runs another forever war on autopilot while working families pay at the pump; whether Congress reclaims the war power; whether civilian protection and transparency are non-negotiable; and whether money-power interests that profit from endless conflict get a Super PAC leash on our politics.

International-law credibility is not an abstract. When UN experts find reasonable grounds that American strikes hit a school and a sports-residential area - contested, denied in part, unpublished in investigation - the world hears who we are. When the same report finds Iran committing crimes against humanity against its own people, we do not look away. Dual accountability is adult politics.

Delaware still fills the tanks. Forever war still prices the groceries. Ending the blank check - a real authorization or a real end - is the constitutional job. Refusing Super PAC money from the war machine's beneficiaries is the democratic job.

The Mission urged Iran and the United States to immediately cease violations and crimes, provide full reparations to victims, guarantee non-repetition, end hostilities, pursue diplomacy, and open paths to third-state accountability through universal jurisdiction. Those are the experts' remedies language - not my courtroom order.

Clear box - read it twice:
No court has convicted the United States of war crimes in this conflict. The September 17 finding is reasonable grounds, from a UN Human Rights Council fact-finding mission, in a report that is not binding. CENTCOM denies the Lamerd strikes. The Minab intent dispute remains dual-framed. Iran faces parallel crimes-against-humanity findings in the same report. Hormuz boats remain contested. Oil seizures are sanctions enforcement, not this IHL verdict.

I will not normalize forever war. I will not take Super PAC money. I will not treat civilian death as background noise while Delaware pays the inflation and the moral bill.

On November 3, write TRAVIS JACK STEVENS for U.S. Senate.

People-funded. No Super PAC money. Ever.

travisjackstevens.com

UN / Fact-Finding Mission / OHCHR

• OHCHR - Civilians trapped between state repression and conflict violations (Sep 17, 2026): https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2026/09/iran-civilians-trapped-between-extreme-state-repression-and-violations
• OHCHR - Call for cessation after southern Iran civilian strikes (Sep 14, 2026): https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2026/09/iran-un-fact-finding-mission-calls-immediate-cessation-hostilities-after

Wire / major outlets - Sep 17 finding

• AP (primary): https://apnews.com/article/un-human-rights-us-iran-99e690efd1e818e835d4f5a00e0d261b
• Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/un-mission-finds-grounds-believe-us-committed-war-crimes-iran-tehran-crimes-2026-09-17/
• Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/sep/17/iran-school-bombing-un-mission-us-military-behind-attack
• NBC: https://www.nbcnews.com/world/iran/un-mission-finds-grounds-believe-us-committed-war-crimes-iran-rcna598283
• ABC (AU): https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09-17/reasonable-grounds-us-war-crimes-iran-strike-minab-school/107166362
• CBS/AP: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-war-crimes-iran-possible-un/

Hormuz boats (dual-frame; not Sep 17 FFM pair)

• Axios: https://www.axios.com/2026/09/15/us-iran-boats-navy-drone-strait-hormuz
• Xinhua / Mehr: https://english.news.cn/20260915/fbba219002d94883bfdbf6a2de496608/c.html

Oil / tanker seizures (sanctions enforcement - not FFM IHL finding)

• AP - Skipper seizure: https://apnews.com/article/trump-tanker-seized-venezuela-maduro-0a148ba01684fc6ce1a228dd276732c0
• Reuters - Skipper seizure: https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/trump-administration-seizes-oil-tanker-off-venezuela-coast-us-officials-say-2025-12-10/
• DOJ - forfeiture of Skipper + ~1.8M barrels: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/united-states-seeks-forfeiture-oil-tanker-and-18m-barrels-crude-oil-supported-iran-and
• Reuters - forfeiture filing: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-seeks-forfeiture-oil-tanker-18-million-barrels-crude-oil-2026-02-27/

Amnesty - Tehran urban strikes (NGO "may constitute"; not FFM Sep 17 standard)

• Amnesty International: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2026/09/usa-israel-iran-investigation-into-us-israeli-strikes-on-tehran-neighbourhoods-reveals-devastating-civilian-harm/
• ABC (AU) on Amnesty call for probe: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09-08/amnesty-international-demands-iran-strikes-probe/107127968

With gratitude,
Travis Jack Stevens
Declared Write-In Candidate for U.S. Senate, Delaware
People-funded - No Super PAC - travisjackstevens.com