IWAC – Special Report
What took place in these last 44 years was a chain serial destructions; chain murders, chain acid-tossing’s, chain poisoning, and chain shopping center; the latter itself a clear manifestation of economic cartels bloated by the military officials, in a regime that enables this chain of terrors. Yet, amidst the chain of these 44 years of catastrophes, acid-tossing and direct and targeted poisoning have made their aim set at women’s body. And as a consequence to “Woman, Life, Freedom” Movement, and a clear example of state-terrorism. The chain poisoning of all-girls schools, and, in cases, similar student dorms, has stirred endless worries, speculations, analyses, and discussions. Such analyses, some to be discussed in what follows, there have been indications made to the role played by the state’s (in)visible layers in this act of state-terrorism. It is worth mentioning that the beginning of this series of events, on Nov. 30, 2022, at an all-girls high-school in Qom, which then spread into other cities and regions such as Tehran, Karaj, Ardebil, Sari, Khuzestan and others.
Dr. Hatam Ghaderi, political science lecturer, is among those analysts who sets forth a particular hypothesis, according to which, the state, not as a whole, but rather certain compartments and groups within it, are the perpetrators behind these terrorist attacks against the all-girl’s schools. He states that all police, political, and intelligence institutions, under the dominant grip of Ayatollah Khamenei and thus, the whole liability pertinent to such terrorist attacks is his undertaking; in any case, he considers the hypothesis that there might be no interest for Khamenei out of such terrorist attacks, and only a sign of having lost control due to the presence of certain layers of power within the government structure. He considers such developments to be caused by conflicts over the future of Iran and its replacement as the next supreme leader, and places emphasis on the fact that such attacks have been brought to existence for creating general fear in society and the continuation of such conducts suggests that certain forces are after shaping Iran’s future by gaining dominance over society. Hatam Ghadeir refers to the pseudo-Taliban group that intends to grab power by investing in or playing with the card of a maximalist Islam and holds no regard for public opinion either. A group that, if such hypothesis be materialized, in the course of its path to grab undisputed power, will launch similar attacks to streets, cinemas, and cultural centers as well. In formulating this hypothesis, he refers to the absence of a modern government structure in Iran and points out that either during Reza Shah’s reign, the founder of the last monarchical dynasty in Iran, that is, Pahlavi, or after that, we failed to found an institution of governmentality and, for this reason, government has always been a mere showcase in Iran. The active presence of fire-at-will groups among governmental layers suggests the absence of a modern and competent government structure whose absence might even drag us into anarchy and eventually social collapse. Foreseeing a dark future for Iran, in this hypothesis, he addresses the possibility of the formation of a coalition among such inter-state groups and those abroad; a coalition for a change that would bring about this dark future for the country. Hatam Ghaderi considers Mir Hussein Mousavi’s recent statement [a key politician in the initial phase of the formation of the Islamic regime itself, and the leader of 2009’s Green Movement] a step forward, and considers the delegation campaign [a media maneuver to claim the legitimacy of delegating Reza Shah’s grandson as the leader of the opposition to the regime, in exile] a disappointment; since he notices a deep-rooted tie in Iran’s cultural heritage between “delegation” and religious “custodianship.”
This peculiar way of regarding the intelligence layers inside Iran’s state, and the idea of complicity of world powers with them, on the occasion of the chain poisoning of all-girl’s schools and educational centers, can be traced in the analyses of other individuals throughout the political spectrum, such as that of Abed Tavancheh, a leftist activist and former political prisoner, who conveys more or less the same idea in a different decorum, explaining that if Iran’s future be determined by this sinister complicity, it would pass off no outcome other than putting this country to its thousandth burn. Yet, he articulates the situation more cryptically and with a higher degree of generality to back his claim, and points out the impractibility of producing such toxic poisons used in the attacks in an extra-laboratory environment and thus discerns a group beyond the intelligent layers known thus far in Iran to be behind the organization of this criminal operation, a group who are not to leave any trace behind. Putting emphasis on the question of capital, he considers these intelligence-related investors to be in cahoots with world powers so much so that it does not seem likely for the fate of the entire country to carry any weight in their equations. In his view, too, the security forces behind the abhorring chemical attacks to the schools and jeopardizing the lives of innocent girls, from now on, will unleash further catastrophes. He expects for Iran a fate akin to that of Russia under Putin; a country promised to enjoy democracy in return for its gates opened to the free market, yet, in practice, the security forces rose to power and with democracy the only thing left behind the gates of free market. However, there is not much positive evidence presented in this argument and the trajectory he maps out there are role as if defined in a play, but without being clear that who should exactly enact in these roles; it is neither clear what agents in the state-elite intelligence, organizational, or economic layers have conspired against the political future of Iran, nor is it clear with which global superpower (the US, Russia or elsewhere), they have made a pact; a superpower who sees this pact beneficial to its long-term interests in this country, thus orchestrating such sophisticated series of attacks.
Another figure, Amin Bozorgiyan, a sociologist and media activist, rejects the entertained idea that chemical attacks launched against schools be attributable to the extremist Shiite groups, reactionary sects, and the self-proclaimed “millennialists” who oppose girls receiving education at schools; instead of certain layers within the government structure, he directly attributes the attacks to the state in overall for harvesting insecurity with the aim of creating a state of exception. “Poisoning girls has no concrete relation with the state’s Islamism. This evil hinges on the question of power and security-related aspects of sociopsychology. This event is meant to help to demonstrate to the people fed up with the situation that the existing government is placed somewhere between you (that is, the people) and radical forces and its absence, or that of its authority, can empower those forces who do not even show mercy to your children and daughters. If the state has killed or arrested a number of children in the past months, its absence would endanger everybody.” In fact, unlike the other two analysts quoted above, Amin Bozorgiyan recognizes this catastrophe to be a state-driven project for “injecting insecurity with the aim of establishing the existing authority.” In other words, He applies the theory of the “state of exception,” developed by Karl Schmitt and later Giorgio Agamben, and holds that the state has suspended the law in order to surpass mass protests and establish the status quo.
This aside, other figures of note have recognized the state and supreme leader himself to be responsible for this act of state-terrorism: Zahra Rahnavard [one of the leaders of Green Movement, put into house arrest along with her husband, Mir Hussein Mousavi, for over a decade now] considers the cause behind recent chain poisoning to be the vengefulness of the misogynist ruling class against “innocent school, high school, and university female students” in response to the outbreak of “Woman, Life, Freedom” Movement; Abolfazl Ghadyani [a former major reformist and now revolutionary dissident based in Iran] boldly considers the origin of this crime against humanity to be the “apparatus and devilish command chamber of the despotic-theocratic regime headed by Ali Khamanei” and says that “all of us, the people, are familiar with the evil temperament and haggish habit of this dictator, that of vengeance-seeking and grudge-holding and after crime denial;” Reza Alijani, too, recognizes these poisoning attacks to be enforced by the vast network of IRGC and Basij Militia, a network that enjoys “such a security coverage that can pursue their activities for three consecutive months without ever being faced with any obstacle.” Yet, in this tumult of speculations and theories, certain western media, such as BBC, whitewashed the catastrophe by denying chain poisoning of the students and act of state-terrorism, and setting forth the hypothesis of “mass hysteria” in their reports; and some “non-mainstream” social media platforms with a clear agenda of advocating and propagating the Iranian state’s propaganda in form of a so-called soft war, a fact un-shadowed by the confidential archived correspondences of one of the security-backed news agencies which was hacked and made accessible to the public on the internet, in which it was affirmed that there had been indeed such an agenda of outsourcing the regime’s propaganda literature to such media outlets abroad, operating systematically in favor of the regime’s position, but under the guise of leftism, anti-colonialism, and antagonism to the Nato-US front of imperialism, especially, in the Middle East, such media, too, proposed similar concocted stories such as “psychogenic illness” in explaining the source of the outbreak of psychosomatic symptoms and reactions at female-exclusive educational centers, and thus deemed it an outcome of certain inculcations made in the course of a full-fronted “cognitive war” by the opposition media, based abroad (including almost the entirety of the content and activities on social media); such propagandizing forgeries, in the most exact sense of the word, which, of course, proved to be quite palatable to the regime-backed media and thus was vastly regurgitated by them. This is while months of documentation, even in the official news agencies inside the country beg to differ and, for instance, the treatment deputy of Health Department declared on Mar. 13, 2023, that 13000 students were referred to medical centers or visited by the emergency.
Following these attacks, there were performances delivered both in the country and beyond its borders, to express their utter abhorrence with this new state-developed technique of child-abuse; the deliverance of such performances can be regarded in line with the similar protests performances in the course of “Woman, Life, Freedom” Movement among which, the best known one was chain performances, mostly in Europe, with a Handmaid’s Tale outfit. In the course of these poisonings, Tabriz Medical Sciences Uni. students and those of Shahid Beheshti Uni., delivered a group performance in protest to this act of state terrorism. Outside the country, too, the Iranian protestors residing in Switzerland, Geneva, delivered a protest performance. That aside, on Mar. 16, in response to a call made by the Collaborating Council of Teachers’ Union, teachers and the rest of population rallied in streets in various cities of the country in protest to the state inefficiency and incompetent in identifying those involved; Tehran, Tabriz, Shiraz, Mashhad, Neyshabour, Rasht, Karaj, Sanandaj, Saghez, Mariwan, Kazeroun, Isfahan, Zanjan, Sari, Babol, Jolfa, Harsin, Hamedan, and Bushehr were among the cities that witnessed such demonstrations. In the course of these protests, a number of unionist teachers got arrested. On Mar. 4, too, in certain cities, student parents and other citizens formed dispersed protest rallies against these chain poisoning attacks.
Various enraged manifestos written by different organizations and groups of people, in the course of these catastrophic events, illuminates the apex of rage, awareness, and sensitivity of society against violence exerted upon women and children in Iran. This extent of solidarity and univocality against such a vivid discrimination against women and girls of this country, is hardly matched in the course of Iran’s history, demonstrating that now the women’s question is an essential force itself and an inseparable part of any struggle against the ruling dictatorship and the oppressed bodies of women the very domain from which revolution originates and from there brought into streets. Words and phrases applied in these manifestos, such as “terror,” “human catastrophe,” “state-terrorism,” and “the grave danger of young girls’ depravity from right to education,” in themselves, create a world where it seems that women have come to their own voice in crying out the historical oppression they have suffered from free of any reification and objectification.
However, from a more statistical and factual point of view, gradually and with regard to the manner of victims’ intoxication and clinical symptoms developed by them, suggest exposure to a certain synthetic chemical material whose exact content has yet remained unidentified. These attacks were intensified in Feb. and Mar. 2023, resulting in a myriad of reaction by political and civil activists. According to a report published by HRA, the human rights news agency, from Nov. 22nd to Mar. 11th, 297 schools and educational institutes in 29 provinces were recorded to be exposed to poisoning attacks, among whom poisoned female student victims were considerably more than their male counterparts (224 all-girls schools, 18 boy’s schools, and 4 co-ed ones); by the end of the last Persian calendar year, that is, Mar. 20, 2023, 45 protest demonstrations have taken place in 32 cities in response to these attacks and 11 protesting citizens arrested by the police. The statistics include 113 high schools, 38 elementary schools, 23 middle schools and 2 student dorms. These attacks were reported to have taken place in 103 cities from 29 provinces; Tehran holds the highest record with 33 cases of attacks, after that, there is Qom province [the religious capital of the state] with 28 cases, and then there is Ardebil province with 26 ones, come second and third, respectively. Among these 103 cases, 7800 students have developed poisoning symptoms and the most recorded attacks in a day has been 81 cases in Mar. 2023. The attacks rocketed during Feb. and Mar., and after Khamenei’s speech on Mar. 6, where he called them a major crime and demanded all involved to be faced with capital punishment, and also by the approach of the Iranian New Year holidays, the attacks suddenly came to halt, but after that, in the coming year of the Persian calendar, chemical attacks were reiterated and cases were reported (which will be addressed in more detail in the second part of the present report) in certain cities such as in Saghez, including a girl called Hengameh who had to be hospitalized in result.
As said earlier, by the intensification of these chain poisoning or chemical attacks, in late Feb. early Mar. of 2023, there was an outburst of various manifestos and joint statements published by different social groups including that of lecturers, students, doctors, artists, authors and other political or civil activists, signed by large numbers of signatories, whose core message was the utter condemnation of such inhuman and abhorring act, while demanding the authorities to address this situation instantaneously, in order to bring its perpetrators to punishment. There have been 20 manifestos as such published: 1. By Freedom and Welfare Party, 2. By 326 lecturers throughout the country, 3. By over 100 artists and authors in Iran, 4. By Tarbiyat Modarres students, 5. By women rights activists, 7. By the instruction and research conglomeration of Qom seminary, 7. By a number of teachers and students in Tabriz (the joint statement of the Islamic Association of Students from Tabriz Medical Sciences students and the independent teachers’ union in East Azarbaijan in relation with the criminal act against all-girls school), 8. By another group of women rights activists, 9. By Student Union, 10. By the Independent Iranian Film-Makers Association (IIFMA), titled “the infected childhood,” 11. By the Free-Thinkers Association of Allameh Tabatabayi Uni., 12. By a number of Science Associations, 13. By a number of lecturers from Chamran Uni., Ahwaz, 14. By a number of Tehran Uni. students, 15. By a number of cinematographers, documentary-makers, journalists, civil activists, and members of art and culture communities, 16. By doctors and paramedics and medical activists, 17. By a number of religious reformists, 18. By Amnesty International, 19. By Feminists4Jina (a non-mainstream international network of feminist activists formed after and around the outbreak of Zhina (Mahsa) Movement, 19. By a number of scientific associations over the physical and psychological risks of recent students’ poisoning signed by all medical specialized and sub-specialized associations, and 20. By the women fraction of the congress. In addition to them, there have been other reactions to these attacks such as a message by Narges Muhammadi from prison, a joint announcement by three political coalitions (Conference of Nationalities for a Federal Iran, the Council of Democrats of Iran, and Solidarity for Freedom and Equality in Iran), and Iran Writers Association, in its “News Commentary” publication along with the announcement of the Revolutionary Students of Tehran. However, put together, these statements reveal the comprehensive and profound engagement of almost all social groups with these attacks and their collective trauma scope and intensity and also show away an all-encompassing social and civil persistence against them, and the perpetuated indifference to this explicit collective demand underlying the common ground shared by all these statements, and increasingly signifies an abysmal rupture between the state’s practice and society’s theory.
However, in addition to the joint focus of all statements mentioned above over the question of condemning these attacks and emphasizing an immediate need for the state’s reaction to address these disturbing events, while laying emphasis on topics above beyond those redlines ever-silenced or denied by the regime, some of them expressed their explicit contention for the official positions taken by the state including in the joint statement of 326 lecturers throughout the country, which can be taken as one of the most significant and compelling ones: “Since, the state is disappointingly viewed by the people in light of skepticism and distrust, and there is fear that in such circumstances, even worse mishaps rise to meet this country, tolerating these fast-growing catastrophes is beyond the mental capacity of the society. The very least to be expected from the state, in such a state of distrust and desperation, is an integrated, with investigative deadline and urgency, and with utmost transparency, with a definitive result.” In the statement released by the students of Khajeh Nasir Industrial Uni., one can read: “when the sacrosanct of the universities was violated by the security agents, let in, and the voice of the well-aware students was kept muffled away, by the use of arrests and persecutions, from those whose job is to hear the people out, we were supposed to expect the violation of schools as well…Be done with your all too cliché method of projecting problems onto everyone but yourselves, and behold, with eyes wide open, the situation we are faced with today. Unfortunately, the administrative position in our country is so matchlessly consecrated and has distanced itself from people that we cannot even consider ourselves to be part of the corpus of decision-makers, and the crude and crass statements made by some of these so-called congressmen and administrators is narrowed down to “we will not compromise any effort” and “it is in progress.” In the statement released by the documentary-makers, there is an emphasis placed on previous similar events: “We, and all Iranians, can still remember the catastrophic acid-tossing of 2015 [referring to a series of such attacks against young women in Isfahan over not following the official Islamic dress-code, which was later, and through journalistic investigations, related to a number of hardliner clergies in the regime], the deformedly burnt faces of those women and girls whose only sin was wanting to live their lives to their own preference. Your silence today is the continuity of the same silence that prevailed by the help of security organizations, against the demand for the authorizers and perpetrators of those attacks to be identified…We emphasize all the more that the equality and freedom seeking movement of “Woman, Life, Freedom” will not come to an end with whatever threat, and will become a role-model for the women in the entire region, especially for our Afghan sisters.” In another statement released by 300 Iranian authors, the historical record of advocating women’s right to education from the constitutional revolution [1905-11] to the present time is pointed out, and considered the targeted location of these attacks, that is women-exclusive educational facilities such as all-girls schools, and their targeted community, that is, schoolgirls and female students, deeming it a fundamentalist, reactionary, yet all too familiar attempt, for depriving women and girls from this very basic right to education.
In addition, the statement of Tarbiyat Modaress Uni. reads: “the same who guns down in the streets, and rapes, tortures, and executes in prisons, is behind these terrorist attacks against the students. The way to struggle against this state act of terror is as before: collective solidarity and protest demonstrations in streets and at universities and schools. If we do not stand against these terrorist attacks today, they will spill over into other domains and spaces of society, leaving no one and nowhere safe, turning Iran’s future even darker that its now.” Moreover, the women rights activists have point the following out: “such fear-campaigns can turn into a serious threat against women’s right to education. Young women’s education is a right endorsed by international treaties, and securing their right to education can increase gender equality and improve social and economic indexes in other areas…confining women’s education, exposed them to even further threat of their rights being violated, including in mandatory hijab, sexual exploitation and smuggling, premature pregnancy and domestic violence and thus solidify even further the critical social conditions for women among the coming generations.” In the joint statement of a number of physicians and paramedics of the medical community, one can read: “Is it not the liability of our medical, health, and treatment system or forensic officials, to appoint joint parties to the task of discovering the real reasons at work and address these events by clearing the past misunderstandings as in the case of suspicious deaths, and provide scientifically valid and explicit arguments in order to give an answer to the causes behind these events, and thus re-establish their credibility in society?” Religious revisionist and reformers, too, considered the perpetration of certain state security agents, stating that “in the chain poisoning of female students in all-girls schools, fingers are pointed at the state itself, and the possibility of the perpetration of “plainclothes,” “rogue,” and “fire-at-will” forces in these attacks has been taken into consideration.” Also, in Narges Mohammadi’s open letter published from prison, with a more candid tone, saying: “by whistleblowing and massive movements and street rallies in Iran, we have to put an end to this murderous act against our daughters…so far, not only has not the state prevented this violence from being carried out, but also it has not even introduced anyone as a suspect or affiliated, this is while the global community is witnessing the intensity and acceleration of security and judicial measures taken against ordinary people in “Woman, Life, Freedom” Movement, even with those shouting slogans from their own balconies.” Feminists4Jina [a global feminist collective formed in response to women’s struggle throughout the country by the rise of recent mass protests], regards the whole situation from a different angle: “In recent days, the IRGC-affiliated newspapers, propagated the misogynistic theory of “mass hysteria,” and hand in hand with the regime’s national media, circulated this disinformation. Yet, with the continuation of the poisoning attacks in recent months, the majority of people were well-aware of the underlying truth, despotic regimes learn fearmongering and suppressing techniques from one another, including that of Russia, who assassinated the well-known Ukrainian journalist who was investigating the mass poisoning of a large number of students in Chechenia in 2006.”
Now, having reviewed the shared gist of all the statements issued and positions taken above, which indeed provides us with a comprehensive general run, and can illustrate better the “abysmal rupture between the state’s practice and society’s theory” in the initial phase of these attacks finding their way to media. Since against this clearly and unanimously expressed expectation of all social groups for the state to bring these attacks into termination, and persecute, arrest, and identify their perpetrators, definitely and transparently, the state crawls back to its time-(dis)honored “practice” of launching chain arrests to thwart information-distribution at the outset, that is, at local and field level, such as the abductive arrest of Sarina Mahmud Salehi, an animation student at an all-girls vocational college in Karaj, by security forces on Mar. 2, 2023, after news about a chemical attack to her dorm were published. After that, Seyyed Ali Pourtabatabyi, journalist and chief editor at “Qom News” agency, and media advisor and instructor, and Tweeter activist, who was arrested on Mar. 5th, in his hometown, Qom, making a short phone contact to his sister, the same day, informing about his arrest. As speculated by HRA, the Iranian human rights news agency, his arrest was related to his recent pursuit of chain chemical attacks, especially against schools, in Qom. In the course of these chain arrests, on Mar. 10, Turkish and Farsi speaking media in Iran, both, inform about the arrest of Reza Pourjaffar, artist and actor from Azerbaijan, Urmia, and relate his arrest to the critical content that he would produce on his Instagram account against chemical attacks to all-girls schools, an account that was deactivated after his arrest.
Again, in line with their reactionary patterns, the state showed quite a deal of contradictory, deranged, and projective responses to these attacks, on one side, on Mar. 6, 2023, the leader officially reacted after, belatedly and after four month since their outbreak, and deemed them to be criminal, promising the unpardonable punishment of its perpetrators, and, of course, totally denied the state having anything to do with them, and, following him, the head of the Judiciary, Mohseni Ejheyi, promised capital punishment for those involved and threatened media and social activists to stop tracing these attacks back to the state, and, on the other, Mehdi Chamran, the head of Tehran City Council (with a record of economic corruption), comments on these attacks in a meeting at this organization, on Mar. 5th, claiming the cause of the attacks unidentified, wishing that organizations with authority would give results soon, speaking of “those who worsen the situation inside the country and abroad,” bringing in “the ambassadors of countries such as England in WWI who created an artificial famine and jeopardized 10 million lives of our people”, and implied that western agents and their affiliates inside the country are responsible for such attacks bring provoked. In parallel, the Ministries of Intelligence and of the Interior, released separate statements in which, following their general guideline, they tried to downplay the horrifying and unprecedented dimensions of this historically single-standing widespread event in the biography of the current regime, and either deny the very occurrence of these attacks incipiently or, if not possible anymore, attribute them to the vandalizing protestors of the recent movement or other fabricated agents. Let’s not mention the rest of such responses by high officials who pushed it so far that they discerned the hands of teachers’ community or even students behind these incidents and that, after months, there is still no valid official information released about the nature of the gas applied in the attacks, in line with the relentless pressure on medical staff and experts or nurses throughout the country for not releasing any information about the victims and relevant medical facts, all of which, put together, give out a sad and terrifying blueprint of a collapsed and marring system whose very day-to-day sustenance is no longer possible without the imposition of profoundly costly, comprehensive, and structural damages to society.
