Iranian officials are investigating reports of about 700 girls at schools in and around the holy city of Qom being poisoned by some kind of “toxic gas.”
There have been no fatalities and very few hospitalizations according to the BBC. But the attacks are spreading panic among parents across the country, and some speculate that the goal is to force parents to pull their children from school.
There are still protests going on in Iran, and many girls’ schools have been at the center of the demonstrations. The girls have taken off their head coverings and cut their hair in solidarity with street protesters who have been beaten and thrown in jail. Some dissidents speculate that either the government or pro-government forces are taking revenge on the schools in order to force them to close.
“It became evident that some people wanted all schools, especially girls’ schools, to be closed down,” the deputy health minister said on Sunday.
However, he later said that his remarks had been misunderstood.
The prosecutor general announced last week that he was opening a criminal investigation. However, he said that the available information only indicated “the possibility of criminal and premeditated acts”.
Meanwhile, public frustration is continuing to grow.
The first poisoning took place on Nov. 30, 2022, when 18 students from the Nour Technical School in Qom were taken to the hospital. Since then, at least 10 girls’ schools have been targeted.
The poisoned girls have reported the smell of tangerine or rotten fish before falling ill.
Earlier this month, at least 100 people protested outside the governor’s office in Qom.
“You are obliged to ensure my children’s safety! I have two daughters,” one father shouted in a video widely shared on social media. “Two daughters… and all I can do is not let them go to school.”
“This is a war!” declared a woman. “They are doing this in a girls’ high school in Qom to force us to sit at home. They want girls to stay at home.”
“The poisoning of students at girls’ schools, which have been confirmed as deliberate acts, was neither arbitrary nor accidental,” tweeted Mohammad Habibi, spokesman for the Iranian Teachers Trade Association on Feb. 26. “To erase the gains on freedom of clothing, (the authorities) need to increase public fear,” he added.
We shouldn’t put anything past the Iranian wildmen. And given the extreme factionalism of the Iranian government, it’s entirely possible that one faction thought up this brilliant plan to only slightly poison little girls, leaving parents and teachers shaking in fear.
One such government grouping — the extreme hardline faction — may be trying to emulate the Taliban, which closed girls’ secondary schools in September.
Dan Kaszeta, a London-based defense specialist, points out that the poisoning of girls’ schools is directly out of the Taliban playbook.
“These current incidents in Iran are remarkably similar to dozens of incidents at schools in Afghanistan since approximately 2009. In a few of these incidents, pesticides were strongly suspected, but most of the illnesses remain unexplained,” he said.
How anyone can look at a little girl and think she represents a danger to the regime demonstrates the epidemy of stupidity. But no one ever accused the Iranian fanatics of being smart.
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