Scottish airport enabled US school bombing in Iran

The children of Minab did not die in a vacuum

Mohaddeseh Fallahat watched her children walk to school on the morning of February 28, 2026. She would never see them again.

Mahdiyeh and Amin Ahmadzadeh were among at least 120 students and 26 teachers killed when a US-manufactured Tomahawk cruise missile struck their elementary school in Minab, Iran. The attack was carried out as part of Operation Epic Fury, which also killed Iran’s Supreme Leader. It has been formally investigated as a war crime by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.

“When I sent my children off to their elementary school there was no sign that this would be the last time,” Fallahat told the UN Human Rights Council in March, her voice breaking across a video link from Iran. “My heart burns with pain.”

Raha Zerai was nine years old. Described by her mother Fariba Zarei as having “thick curly hair and a contagious laugh,” she was an only child. She is now among the 171 dead.

The parents of Minab did not choose to send their children into the path of American missiles. But new evidence reveals that Scotland’s publicly owned infrastructure played a material role in delivering those missiles, and the next wave may already be loading.

Eight flights. Ten days. Before the bombs fell.

The National reported on May 29 that US military aircraft departed Glasgow Prestwick Airport at least eight times in the week of May 18–25, 2026. That same week, the jets routed onwards to Naval Air Station Sigonella in Sicily and other NATO and Israeli hubs. The strikes that followed, May 26–28, 2026, killed Iranian military personnel and prompted immediate international alarm.

The pattern is deliberate and repeats. Before February’s strikes that opened the current war, Prestwick recorded 32 US military flights in the ten days leading to Operation Epic Fury. The aircraft identified include C-17 Globemaster and Lockheed C-130T Hercules transports, workhorses of military logistics, capable of carrying weapons, personnel, and equipment across continents.

“What’s happening at Prestwick constitutes concrete proof that the airport is embedded in the US’s illegal bombing supply chain,” a military intelligence expert told The National.

The UK Ministry of Defence insists the airport is “not being used to launch military strikes.” But the flight tracking data shows aircraft departing from Scottish soil and landing at staging points from which attacks are launched. The logical chain is unbroken, and the MoD refuses to explain what those flights were carrying.

Scotland owns the airport. Scotland does not control it.

Glasgow Prestwick Airport was nationalised by the Scottish Government in 2013. It is, in the most literal sense, publicly owned infrastructure, belonging to the people of Scotland, paid for by Scottish taxpayers.

Yet when First Minister John Swinney was asked whether he would ban US military aircraft from using Prestwick, his response was telling. He would “consider” it, he said, but Scotland lacks the legal power to act without Westminster. The UK Government, for its part, refuses to confirm or explain what Prestwick is being used for.

In February 2026, Scottish MSPs voted down a motion (S6M-20819) to end US military use of Scottish airports. The Scottish Greens brought the motion; Labour, the Conservatives, and the majority of the SNP voted it down. Patrick Harvie MSP, the Greens’ co-leader, pointed to the hypocrisy: “The First Minister has previously said he would look into banning the use of publicly owned Scottish infrastructure like Prestwick in the US war efforts, yet months later, there has been no action.”

Even if the legal complexity Swinney cites is real, it does not alter one brute fact: Scottish infrastructure is enabling the deaths of civilians in Iran. The question is not whether Holyrood has the power. It is why neither Holyrood nor Westminster will use what power they have to stop it.

Scotland opposes this war. Scotland is not being asked.

The polling is unambiguous. Sixty percent of Scots oppose the US-Israeli war on Iran. Fifty-six percent oppose US bombers using Prestwick. Among SNP voters, the opposition climbs to 70 percent; among Scottish Greens supporters, the same. Only 25 percent support the military action in any form.

Mark Diffley, the pollster who conducted the research, noted that even that minority is fragile: “If the war hits fuel prices and household bills, even that 25 percent could really fall away.”

The people of Scotland have spoken, and they have been ignored. Their airport is being used to facilitate bombings that have killed children in their classrooms. Their government says it cannot act. Their Westminster masters will not answer questions. And the airplanes keep landing.

The legal argument cannot outrun the moral one

The strongest counter-argument is that direct attribution is difficult. The planes at Prestwick could theoretically be carrying logistics rather than weapons. The MoD has leaned on exactly this ambiguity, insisting the airport is not a “launch” point for strikes.

But this defies the weight of evidence. The pattern is consistent, documented, and timed precisely alongside escalations. Military logistics are not neutral activity. They are part of the chain that delivers ordnance to its target. A C-17 Globemaster does not fly to Sigonella to deliver holiday postcards.

Moreover, the legal argument, that Scotland cannot act without Westminster, is a confession of political failure, not an excuse. The Scottish Parliament voted down a motion to end this use. The First Minister “considers” a ban while nothing changes. The UK Government stonewalls. The airport keeps operating.

If the law prevents Scotland from closing its own airport to a war that 60 percent of its citizens oppose, then the law, and the political class that invokes it, is the problem. It is not the victims of Minab who must justify their existence to the system. It is the system that must justify itself to them.

Mohaddeseh Fallahat is still waiting

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk has called on the United States to conclude its investigation into the Minab school strike. UNESCO declared the bombing a grave violation of international humanitarian law. The US has not acknowledged responsibility. President Trump, when asked about evidence linking US missiles to the attack, said he would “live with” the investigation’s conclusion.

The mothers of Minab are still waiting for justice. They are still burying their children. And every ten days, when the flight tracking data spikes over Prestwick, another cycle of strikes becomes possible, carried on aircraft that may have passed through Scottish airspace, on missiles that may have been loaded on Scottish tarmac, in a war that Scotland’s own people overwhelmingly reject.

This is not a story about procedure or sovereignty. It is about complicity, and whose voices are being silenced so the bombs can keep falling.

Scotland owns the airport. The question is whether Scotland will ever own the decision.