DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – Iran’s president on Wednesday ordered an investigation into a series of incidents in which noxious gases caused nausea and other ailments in students at girls’ schools that some officials suspect are attacks on women’s education.
Hundreds of female students at some 30 schools have suffered the effects since November, and some have been hospitalized. Authorities initially turned a blind eye, and only days ago acknowledged the scale of the crisis.
Girls have complained of headaches, palpitations, lethargy and even inability to move. Some have reported smelling tangerines, chlorine or cleaning products.
Unlike neighboring Afghanistan, there have been no religious extremist attacks on girls’ education in Iran. Women and girls continued to attend classes even during the 1979 Islamic Revolution that toppled the Western-backed monarchy.
President Ebrahin Raisi told a cabinet meeting Wednesday that the Interior Ministry should investigate the incidents with the help of the health and intelligence ministries and immediately release the results to the public, state news agency IRNA reported.
It was the first time the president spoke publicly about the poisonings.
The night before the meeting, a senior security official downplayed the issue, which he said was psychological warfare waged by enemies of the country, whom he did not identify.
“More than 99% of this is stress, rumors and psychological warfare initiated by particularly hostile TV channels to create a disturbed and stressful situation for female students and their parents,” Deputy Interior Minister Majid Mirahmadi told state TV. “Their aim was to force the closure of schools.”
This is a difficult time in Iran, following months of nationwide protests since September, when a young woman died after being arrested by morality police for allegedly violating the strict Islamic dress code.
After months of downplaying the incidents in schools, IRNA published several stories on Sunday in which various officials acknowledged the magnitude of the events.
The prosecutor general has ordered an investigation because “there are possibilities of deliberate criminal acts.” A deputy health minister told IRNA that certain individuals, whom he did not identify, were seeking the closure of the schools.