What do we know about suspected poisonings of schoolgirls in Iran?

Guardian -March 7th 2023

More than 1,000 Iranian girls in schools across the country appear to have suffered “mild poison” attacks since November, when the first cases emerged in the city of Qom, according to state media and officials.

The suspected attacks have been described by some observers as part of an extremist response – perhaps with tacit state endorsement – to the protests led by women and girls that have convulsed Iran since the death of Mahsa Amini in September.

But there are also suggestions that some of the cases may be evidence of mass sociogenic illness – symptoms without a biomedical cause – stemming from the repression of schoolgirls who have played a leading role in that movement.

One of the reasons why the suspected attacks have been so shocking is that girls’ education has been an accepted and fairly ordinary part of life in Iran. Since 2011, women have outnumbered men on university campuses; the World Bank says female literacy rose from 26% in 1976, before the Islamic Revolution, to 85% in 2021. While a 2012 policy restricted places for women at some public universities, the principle that girls are entitled to go to school is not a controversial one.

Here is a summary of what we know, and what the consequences may be.

What is causing the incidents?

Because of severe limits on press freedom on Iran, reporters face challenges to their ability to investigate the circumstances of the incidents – and there is no direct evidence of responsibility. But it is possible to put some details together.

“The attacks aren’t sophisticated at all,” said Deepa Parent, a human rights journalist who has been covering the story for the Guardian. “One doctor told me that based on the symptoms they’re seeing, it’s likely to be a weak organophosphate agent [widely used in agriculture as pesticide].” The doctor told Parent that the only people he had treated in the past with similar symptoms worked in agricultural or military settings.

In seeking to narrow possible responsibility, some have looked to the fact that the first incidents were in Qom, a highly religious city about 80 miles from Tehran. “While girls’ education is widely accepted, there are radical Islamists there who are against it,” Parent said.

Some have asked if the incidents may be sanctioned or enabled by the government as part of efforts to intimidate the protest movement that has gripped the country since September, when Amini, a young Kurdish woman, died in the custody of Iran’s “morality police”. Given the simplicity of the suspected raw materials, it is also possible the attacks were copycat incidents.

There have also been claims that at least some of the cases may be the product of “mass sociogenic illness”, where symptoms spread without a clear biomedical cause. Proponents of that argument note the harsh repression of protesters in Iran as a possible trigger.

A review of blood tests from some Iranian schoolgirls found no evidence of toxins, this BBC explainer notes – although it also says that the results are not sufficient evidence to rule out poisoning even in the cases under review. The Wall Street Journal reported that in one video posted on social media last week, a class appeared to fall ill after a girl with asthma suffered breathing difficulties, which prompted a teacher to ask if students had smelled anything.

While it is plausible that some cases could be explained this way, in some instances witnesses have reported seeing suspicious objects thrown into schoolyards. Dan Kaszeta, a chemical weapons expert at the Royal United Services Institute thinktank, told the BBC that poisonous substances can quickly degrade, making it very hard to draw firm conclusions. Some have also asked if similar incidents involving men or boys would have been subjected to the same scrutiny over the possibility of an “anxious” response

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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/06/what-do-we-know-suspected-poisonings-schoolgirls-iran