BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraq head coach Graham Arnold has issued an urgent plea to soccer's international governing body to postpone his team's intercontinental qualifier for the World Cup because of disruptions caused by the escalating Iran war.
The Iraq squad faces major logistical issues ahead of a winner-takes-all playoff against either Suriname or Bolivia, scheduled for March 31 in Monterrey, Mexico.
With Iraqi airspace closed until April 1 due to the escalating conflict, Arnold’s squad — containing predominantly players from the domestic league — is unable to fully gather.
Players haven't secured visas for the playoff tournament in Mexico due to foreign embassy closures, and Arnold is stranded in the United Arab Emirates due to the conflict.
“Please help us with this game because right now we are struggling to get our players out of the country of Iraq,” Arnold, a former coach of Australia's national team, told the Australian Associated Press.
The turmoil has already forced the postponement of a planned training camp in Houston. Arnold said fielding a team comprised only of overseas-based players is not a viable option.
“It wouldn’t be our best team and we need our best team available for the country’s biggest game in 40 years,” he said.
Arnold has proposed a strategic delay to the playoffs schedule, suggesting FIFA allow Suriname and Bolivia to play their preliminary match this month but postponing the final playoff until a week before the World Cup begins.
“In my opinion, if FIFA were to delay the game it gives us time to prepare properly,” Arnold said. "In my opinion, it also gives FIFA more time to decide what Iran is going to do. "
“If Iran withdraws we go into the World Cup, and it gives the UAE, who we beat in qualifying, the chance to prepare for either Bolivia or Suriname.
“Our federation’s president Adnan Dirjal is working round the clock trying to plan and prepare to make everyone in Iraq’s dream come true, so we need this decision made quickly.”
AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
FILE- Iraqi's head coach Graham Arnold sits on the bench at the start of the 2026 World Cup play off first leg soccer match between UAE and Iraq in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, Friday, Nov. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Walid Ibrahim, File)
JERUSALEM (AP) — The investigative group Bellingcat says newly released video “appears to contradict” U.S. President Donald Trump’s claim that Iran was responsible for an explosion at an Iranian school that killed over 165 people at the start of the war raging in the Mideast.
It comes as mounting evidence points to U.S. culpability for the Feb. 28 strike, which hit a school adjacent to a Revolutionary Guard base in Minab, Iran, in the country's southern Hormozgan Province. Experts interviewed by The Associated Press, citing satellite image analysis, say the school was likely struck amid a quick succession of bombs dropped on the compound.
The video shared by Bellingcat is a three-second clip of a video taken the day the school was struck and circulated Sunday by Iran's semiofficial Mehr news agency. The video shows a munition falling on a building, sending a dark plume into the air that mingles with smoke that likely came from earlier strikes on the compound. Trevor Ball, a Bellingcat researcher, geolocated the video to a site near the school, something also done by the AP.
Ball identified the munition as a Tomahawk cruise missile — which only the U.S. is known to possess in this war. It's the first evidence of a munition used in the strike. U.S. Central Command has acknowledged using Tomahawk missiles in this war and even released a photo of the USS Spruance, part of the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier group located within range of the school, firing a Tomahawk missile on Feb. 28.
Complicating any assessment of the incident is the lack of images of bomb fragments from the blast. No independent agency has reached the site during the war to investigate.
When asked by a reporter Saturday whether the U.S. was responsible for the blast, which killed mostly children, Trump responded, without providing evidence: “No, in my opinion, based on what I’ve seen, that was done by Iran.” Trump added that Iran is “very inaccurate” with their munitions. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth quickly chimed in to say the U.S. was investigating.
Janina Dill, an expert on international law at Oxford University, wrote on X that even if the strike was a misidentification — and the attacker believed that the school had been a part of the neighboring IRGC base — it would still be “a very serious violation of international law.”
“Attackers are under an obligation to do everything feasible to verify the status of targeted object,” she wrote.
Several factors point to a U.S. strike.
One is the launching of an assessment of the incident by the U.S. military. According to the Pentagon’s instructions on processes for mitigating civilian harm, an assessment is launched after a group of investigators make an initial determination that the U.S. military may bear culpability.
A U.S. official told the AP that the strike was likely U.S. The official spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to comment publicly on the sensitive matter.
Another is the location of the school — next to the Revolutionary Guard base and close to barracks for a naval unit. The U.S. military has focused on naval targets and acknowledged strikes in the province, including one in the vicinity of the school. Israel, which has denied conducting the strike, has focused on areas of Iran closer to Israel and hasn’t reported any strikes south of Isfahan, 800 kilometers (500 miles) away.
Neither the U.S. military’s Central Command nor the Israeli military immediately replied to requests for comment Monday from the AP on Bellingcat’s analysis.
Speaking about the U.S. operation at a press conference March 2, Hegseth said: “America, regardless of what so-called international institutions say, is unleashing the most lethal and precise air power campaign in history.”
“No stupid rules of engagement,” he said. “No politically correct wars. We fight to win, and we don’t waste time or lives.”
Associated Press writer Aamer Madhani in Doral, Florida, contributed to this report.
Coffins holding the bodies of mostly children sit in a room as they are prepared for the funeral of those killed in what Iranian officials said was an Israeli-U.S. strike Feb. 28 at a girls' elementary school in Minab, Iran, Tuesday, March 3, 2026. (Amirhossein Khorgooei/ISNA via AP)
A man hold a children's backpack as rescue workers and residents search through the rubble in the aftermath of what Iranian officials said was an Israeli-U.S. strike on a girls' elementary school in Minab, Iran, Saturday, Feb. 28, 2026. (Abbas Zakeri/Mehr News Agency via AP)
Rescue workers and residents search through the rubble in the aftermath of what Iranian officials said was an Israeli-U.S. strike on a girls' elementary school in Minab, Iran, Saturday, Feb. 28, 2026. (Abbas Zakeri/Mehr News Agency via AP)
