Since November 2022, when the city of Qom in Iran reported the first case of students at a girls’ school being poisoned, similar attacks have spread to numerous other cities across the country. As of now, over 5,000 schoolchildren, mostly female, have been affected in 25 provinces. The cause and origin of the poisonings remain a mystery, occasioning widespread confusion and anxiety among the general public, with many critical of the government’s lack of urgency in investigating the incidents. Some have speculated that the presumed attacks are motivated by a desire to take “revenge” on girls who chanted against Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei during the protests in the fall of 2022. This memorandum outlines the chronology of events, provides updates on the latest developments, and examines several explanations regarding the potential culprits behind the poisonings.
What Do We Know?
In late November 2022, the first case of poisoning was reported in Qom, after 18 girls from Nur High School were admitted to the hospital for respiratory poisoning. For several weeks, the poisonings were confined to the religious city of Qom, but by February 2023, the school poisonings began to spread to other cities. According to the reformist Hammihan news outlet, 260 female students were sent to the hospital in just one week in the town of Borujerd alone. According to a statement by the interior ministry, as of 6 March 2023, schoolchildren in 250 classrooms have been affected by the poisoning incidents. However, Mohammad-Hasan Asafari, a member of the Majles fact-finding committee tasked with investigating the poisonings, stated that as many as 230 schools in 25 provinces experienced gas poisoning, affecting more than 5,000 mostly female schoolchildren.
Dizziness, heart palpitations, headaches, severe chest pains, numbness, and serious drops in blood oxygen are only some of the symptoms of the schoolgirls affected by the mysterious gas. No official explanation has been provided about the nature or source of the noxious fumes that have affected several hundred individuals across Qom and other cities. However, Alireza Monadi-Sefidan, chairman of the Majles education committee, claimed that the cases of poisoning involve nitrate gas, causing oxygen deficiency and resulting in the reported symptoms. Mohammadreza Hashemi, a senior physician at the emergency unit of Tehran’s Daneshvari hospital, argued that the compound responsible for the poisoning is a combination of several gasses that have caused mild yet serious symptoms. Promising that officials were waiting for the toxicology report of the health ministry, Asafari suggested that different types of gas might have been used in different schools.
No official reports of deaths related to the poisoning have been released, but there are indications that at least one student in Qom may have died. The father of the deceased girl denied any link between his daughter’s death and the serial poisoning, although there are suggestions that the authorities pressed the family to keep quiet.
Official Response
For months, authorities downplayed the gravity of the threat, calling the poisoning “very mild with no health consequences,” which fell far short of parents’ demands for transparency in investigation and the complete moving of classes online pending investigation. IRGC-affiliated Fars News went as far as suggesting “youthful prankishness” or “mass hysteria” as the most likely scenarios. Mohammad-Hasan Qadiri-Abyaneh, a conservative activist and former diplomat close to the Ra’isi administration, claimed that the Mujahedin-e Khalq opposition group was behind the poisoning as its leader, Maryam Rajavi, wanted to blame the government for this sabotage and trigger another wave of anger and protest against the regime. Hosein Allahkaram, the founder of the hardline vigilante group calling themselves Ansar-e Hezbollah, argued that “the enemies, after failing to overthrow the regime, want to keep the protests alive and that is why they are doing this.”
The domestic press is encountering major obstacles in their efforts to report on the story. Notably, Qom News was subjected to a seven-day publication ban in February 2023 after publishing an article speculating that a religious extremist group was responsible for the poisonings. Additionally, Ali Purtabataba’i, an editor at Qom News who had been actively investigating the case for three months, was arrested by authorities in early March 2023. Many government officials and ultra-conservative outlets have promoted the foreign conspiracy hypothesis, further muddying the waters. The ultra-conservative Kayhan newspaper suggested that legal authorities should “summon and question” those who connected the poisoning to the Nezam and its affiliated religious circles. IRGC spokesman Ramezan Sharif also criticized domestic news outlets for suggesting that the Nezam was somehow responsible.
As officials continue to be dismissive and point fingers at external enemies, a growing number of local officials and MPs have asserted that the poisonings are a deliberate act and demanded a thorough investigation of what they have deemed “criminal activity.” According to Yunes Panahi, a technology official at Iran’s ministry of health, the poisoning incidents in Qom were deliberate attempts to shut down schools, particularly those catering to girls. Shahriar Heidari, a reformist-leaning MP, echoed the same sentiment, emphasizing that the act was “organized.” Heidari further suggested that although the ultimate source of the poisoning may be outside of Iran, the perpetrators are likely domestic. In early March 2023, a Majles fact-finding commission, comprising four Majles committees on education, health, national security, and interior, was tasked with investigating the poisonings.
On 2 March, Tehran prosecutor Ali Salehi announced that his office had launched a comprehensive investigation into the recent poisoning of schoolgirls in Tehran, revealing that the investigation has been expanded to include cases of gas exposure among students in the capital. He assured the public that all relevant agencies were working together, but fell short of giving any indication that the culprits were identified. Sakineh(-Sadat) Pad, the Ra’isi administration’s special envoy on social rights and liberties, urged caution in making “hasty” comments about the ongoing poisoning attacks, stressing that as of 3 March 2023, no domestic group has been identified as the perpetrator of the attacks. Without providing any detail, the interior ministry’s deputy on security affairs stated, “Some people in five provinces” were identified and arrested in regards to the poisoning cases. Oddly, Qom, which was the epicenter of the poisoning cases, was not one of the provinces where arrests were made.
On 6 March 2023, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei unexpectedly broke his silence on the poisoning mystery, potentially signaling a shift in the Nezam’s stance. Khamenei stressed that “the perpetrators should be punished severely,” without resorting to his typical rhetoric of a “foreign enemy plot.” This statement put conservatives, who have been pointing to foreign adversaries, in a difficult bind.
Who Are the Culprits?
Considering the paucity of official responses and the lack of clear forensic reports, we posit three different explanations of who might be behind the incidents of poisoning.
Foreign conspiracy. Most government officials and ultra-conservative outlets attribute the recent school poisonings in Iran to a foreign conspiracy. This explanation appears weak, however, because the Iranian government has not reacted to the incidents with the rapidity that typically characterizes its response to suspected terrorism and security threats. For instance, when two security forces were killed during anti-government protests in November 2022, the government arrested the assailants within a week. Moreover, all the poisonings have occurred within school compounds that could have been easily monitored by closed-circuit cameras, yet after three months the authorities still have not identified the perpetrators. Many observers argue that it strains credulity for intelligence and security organizations to fail to detect the perpetrators of the three-month-long school poisonings.
Conspiracy by radical religious groups. Many reformist pundits, journalists, and social media users point the finger at indigenous radical religious groups. As early as 30 January 2023, Qom News published a piece suggesting that the poisoning incidents could be linked to groups with “Taliban-like views” intending to “terrorize girls and their families and create difficulties for their education.” In late February 2023, Mohammad-Taqi Fazel-Meibodi, a member of the reformist Assembly of Qom Seminary Scholars and Researchers, was quoted as saying that “a sociologist who prefers to remain anonymous” had concluded based on research that an apocalyptic “millenarian” (hezarehgara) group was behind these poisonings. While Fazel-Meibodi later disavowed his statement, claiming he was speaking off the record, many social media users asserted that he recanted under pressure. The Assembly of Qom Seminary Scholars and Researchers also released a statement highlighting the presence of “a radical movement” in the country. According to the assembly, this movement employs extremist interpretations of Islam to justify its violent approach. The clerical group has further suggested that this radical movement enjoys “a degree of immunity” and even receives support from official circles. Drawing parallels between the radical religious movements in Iran and the Taliban in Afghanistan, sociologist Mas’ud Sepehr asserted that the dwindling presence of morality police in public spaces foreshadows further instances of religious extremists engaging in unrestrained acts, such as the poisonings, driven by their apocalyptic beliefs.
Possible link to the Nezam. The weakness of the foreign conspiracy explanation, and the government’s uncharacteristically lethargic response to the poisonings, suggests that the perpetrators have some connection to the Nezam, although the extent of this connection and which elements of the Nezam are involved cannot be determined from the limited information available. Tejarat News compared the current situation with the unsolved acid-throwing case in Isfahan in 2014, in which the perpetrators were never brought to justice. The acid attacks caused widespread fear and rumors that the victims were targeted for their loose hijab, but the fact that the cases remained unsolved reinforced the notion that they were somehow connected to the Nezam. Thus far, the impunity of the perpetrators of the school poisonings has also led to speculation they have ties to Nezam officials. One theory gaining traction is the notion that the regime is directly involved in the poisonings, with some promoting the narrative of an “inside job.” They reason that the Nezam forces want to “punish” the schoolgirls for their involvement in the Mahsa Amini protests. While Yadollah Javani, the IRGC’s deputy commander for political affairs—in effect, the organization’s ideological czar—has dismissed the involvement of insiders as “laughable,” he has failed to offer a persuasive alternative, instead predictably shifting blame to “the enemy.”
