The Iranian government has announced several arrests in connection with the reported poisoning of more than 7,000 schoolgirls in more than 100 schools around the country. Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, has condemned the poisonings, saying perpetrators should be “severely punished”.
Yet other government messages are confused. The education department announced that girls who had been taken to hospital were suffering from “mass hysteria” and the education minister insisted that 95% of the girls were merely suffering “fear and worry”.
The available evidence, including reports that pupils detected a strange smell in their classrooms, suggests a number of mass gas attacks in Iranian girls’ schools. Dismissing this reality as “hysteria” is a futile attempt to absolve the state of its culpability.
