But it was not the first time in Iran a failure in US intelligence turned a “precision strike” into the loss of innocent lives.
It was a precision strike intended for an adjacent Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) naval base.
The failure: The US Defense Intelligence Agency failed to update building's status from “military” to “civilian.”
The failure: CIA provided coordinates based on outdated maps. Multiple “verification” steps failed to identify the building.
US Tomahawk missiles struck the Al-Shifa Pharmaceutical Factory in Khartoum, Sudan, claiming it was a chemical weapons facility linked to Al Qaeda.
The facility was actually Sudan's largest producer of anti-malarial drugs.
"Precision weapons are only as accurate as the data behind them." — HRW
Source: NYT, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, CENTCOM
