Eurasia Press & News
Exclusive: Scottish factory helps make US Tomahawk missiles reportedly used in attack on the Minab compound in Iran, where over 100 children were killed.
Graves being prepared for the victims of the Minab school massacre. (Iranian Foreign Media Department / Alamy)
On 28 February, a girls’ primary school in southern Iran was hit by a missile, killing 168 people, mostly children.
The UN education agency, UNESCO, said the bombing of the Shajareh Tayyebeh school in Minab was a “grave violation of humanitarian law”.
Videos analysed by Bellingcat revealed yesterday that a US Tomahawk missile was used to hit another building inside the same compound, adding to evidence indicating the US was responsible for the school strike minutes earlier.
Neither Israel nor Iran is known to possess Tomahawk missiles.
The revelation raises serious questions about whether UK-made components were used in the attack.
This is because a factory owned by US arms firm Raytheon in Glenrothes, Scotland, has won several contracts to produce components for Tomahawk missile systems over recent years.
In 2017, Raytheon won a $260 million contract to make 196 Tomahawks, with 4.4 percent of the goods being supplied from its factory in Glenrothes.
A similar US navy contract published in May 2022 shows that around 3 percent of the Tomahawk supply chain was awarded to Raytheon’s site in Scotland.
Most recently, in December 2025, the Pentagon announced Glenrothes would have a 2.9 percent stake in making another 350 Tomahawks.
A defence industry website said this arrangement reflected the missiles’ “longstanding transatlantic supply chain”.
Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) spokesperson Sam Perlo-Freeman told Declassified: “The UK arms industry is deeply entwined with the US. This is true of the F-35 aircraft that has played such a devastating role in Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and is now playing a crucial role in the illegal US-Israeli war on Iran.
“And it is true of the Tomahawk missiles, which appear to have been used to commit this horrific massacre of schoolgirls in Iran.
“Far from being a guarantee of international peace and security as the government claims, this arms producing partnership is a principal source of war, death and destruction across the world. It is time for the UK to stop fuelling this US-led war machine, and disentangle itself from it”.
Asked whether it will review and potentially suspend export of the components, a UK government spokesperson said: “We operate one of the most robust export control regimes in the world and keep export licences under continual and careful review”.
Raytheon was asked to comment.
‘Play a key part’
A parliamentary report published in 2012-13 noted that Raytheon’s site in Glenrothes “design and manufacture components, predominantly exported to the US, for guidance systems used in weapons like the Tomahawk missile”.
A Glenrothes manager said in 2020 the factory “designed and manufactured three power supplies” for the Tomahawk, adding: “This work enabled us to be involved in one of the US Navy’s flagship programmes and to play a key part in the manufacture of the electronics used in the system”.
Raytheon UK’s own website notes that its “advanced manufacturing business supports… Tomahawk long-range land attack cruise missile[s]”.
A CAAT report from 2021 found that “Glenrothes was the only Raytheon facility outside North America to play a part in the US-sold Tomahawk Missile production and is the sixth most involved of the 25-plus factories contributing to the weapon system”.
‘It was done by Iran’
The new evidence contradicts statements made by US president Donald Trump, who said on Sunday that the attack was launched “by Iran”.
He said: “They’re very inaccurate, as you know, with their munitions. They have no accuracy whatsoever. It was done by Iran”.
NR Jenzen-Jones, the director of Armament Research Services, an intelligence consultancy that provides munitions analysis to governments and NGOs, told the Guardian: “The video shows a Tomahawk missile striking a target. Given the belligerents, that indicates it is a US strike, as Israel is not known to possess Tomahawk missiles”.
He added: “Despite various claims circulating online, the munition in question is clearly not an Iranian Soumar missile [as] the Soumar has a distinctive external engine located towards the rear, on the underside of the munition”.
Reuters reported on 5 March that US military investigators “believe it is likely that US forces were responsible” for the “strike on an Iranian girls’ school”.
Raytheon’s site in Glenrothes has previously been linked to war crimes in Yemen by Saudi Arabia, a key customer.
When Declassified visited the town in 2022, local primary school teacher Sharon Rickard said she was “horrified” to hear weapons made in her town might be used on civilians.
“I have a friend who works there as an engineer and she’s never really said too much about her job”, she said, “but maybe that’s why”.
