CPAC chair says Iranian girls killed in airstrike are "better off" than alive

On the first day of Operation Epic Fury — February 28, 2026 — a U.S.-Israeli airstrike struck a girls' elementary school in Minab, a mid-sized city in southern Iran's Hormozgan province. The Pentagon confirmed the strike targeted an IRGC logistics facility it said was adjacent to the school. Iran's state media reported 175 dead, including students, teachers, and administrative staff. Independent verification of the death toll was not immediately possible due to restricted press access in the region.

The Minab strike became one of the most contested incidents of the war's opening week. Human rights organizations including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch called for an independent investigation, citing the school's location in a residential area and the absence of any warning before the strike.

MSMatt Schlapp has led the American Conservative Union since 2014. The ACU runs CPAC, the largest annual gathering of conservative activists and politicians in the United States. Republican presidential candidates, sitting senators, and cabinet members address CPAC every year. Schlapp is not a government official, but he is one of the most influential figures in the infrastructure of the American conservative movement and a close ally of Trump.

His decision to appear on PMPiers Morgan Uncensored — a program that routinely hosts combative political debates — put him in direct conversation with journalist PBPeter Beinart, a prominent critic of Israeli and U.S. military policy, specifically to debate civilian casualties in Iran.

When Beinart argued that the 175 children killed at the Minab school would be alive if the U.S. and Israel hadn't launched the war, Schlapp interrupted and said they would only have been 'alive in a burqa.' The implication was explicit: life under the Islamic Republic was so degraded for women and girls that death in a U.S.-Israeli airstrike was, in some sense, preferable or morally equivalent.

PMPiers Morgan interrupted Schlapp immediately. Morgan told him on air that Iranian women are not required to wear a burqa — they are required to wear a hijab, a head covering that leaves the face visible. Morgan also noted that Iranian women make up more than 60% of university graduates in Iran, and that the country has a significant professional and educated female workforce despite religious restrictions.

The burqa/hijab distinction matters because it reveals the factual basis — or lack of it — for Schlapp's moral argument. The burqa, which covers the entire face and body, is associated primarily with Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, where women have been systematically banned from education, employment, and public life since the Taliban returned to power in 2021.

Iran's restrictions on women are serious and widely condemned by human rights organizations. But Iranian women can drive, vote, attend university, work in most professions, and serve in elected office. Conflating Iran with Taliban Afghanistan — as Schlapp did — is not a minor factual error. It erases the actual lives of Iranian women to construct a rhetorical justification for their deaths.

Journalist YAYashar Ali, himself Iranian-American with family in Iran, published a widely-shared response on X calling Schlapp's comment 'basic ignorance' and noting that it 'confuses Iran with Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.' Ali pointed out that his own female relatives in Iran are lawyers, doctors, and engineers.

Ali's response was notable because he is not a left-wing commentator. He has reported critically on both Democratic and Republican figures, and his Iranian heritage gave his correction a weight that purely political critics couldn't carry. His post was shared hundreds of thousands of times within 24 hours.

The White House did not condemn Schlapp's remarks. Press Secretary KLKaroline Leavitt, when asked about the Minab school strike at a March 6 briefing, said the administration was 'investigating' the incident and stood by the military's targeting assessment. She did not address Schlapp's television comments.

The absence of any White House condemnation is significant. Schlapp is not a fringe figure. He leads the organization that is arguably the most important annual platform for Republican politics. His comments — and the silence around them — reflect a broader pattern in how war supporters have responded to civilian casualty reports from Operation Epic Fury: by questioning Iranian casualty data, emphasizing the Islamic Republic's human rights record, or suggesting that the deaths are outweighed by strategic goals.

The Schlapp exchange illustrates a phenomenon scholars of war propaganda have called 'dehumanization by comparison.' Rather than defending the strike on military grounds, Schlapp shifted the frame: the victims were better off dead. This rhetorical move doesn't require claiming the strike was accurate or legal. It forecloses the question of civilian harm entirely by denying the value of the lives lost.

Journalism scholars and media literacy researchers have documented this pattern in coverage of multiple U.S. wars. The argument that civilians in adversary countries are better off dead than living under their government has appeared in American political discourse during the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Iraq War, and now the Iran war. Recognizing the pattern is a core media literacy skill.

The Minab school strike and the Schlapp exchange became a focal point for the anti-war protest movement that mobilized in 50 cities on March 7. Organizers projected images of the school on buildings in 🗽New York and 🌲Washington. Several speakers at Columbus Circle cited the Schlapp interview directly, using it to illustrate how civilian casualties are rationalized in wartime political media.

The episode also drew scrutiny from journalism professors and media critics, who used the Morgan/Schlapp exchange as a classroom example of real-time fact-checking and the difference between a television host who challenges a guest's factual claims versus one who amplifies them.