Commotion In Iran’s Parliament Over School Poisoning Attacks

Last Sunday the rial had dropped to 600.000 against the US dollar, but exactly a week later it stood at a little over 500,000 on March 4, probably over hopes that the Islamic Republic would opt for closer cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, and what some in Iran hope would lead to a resumption of talks with the United States.

Despite the rebound, the rial is still down 100 percent since President Ebrahim Raisi took office in August 2021, as Iran suffers from both lack of oil export income and a crisis in its domestic economy. Although the rial might rise some more but it is a fundamentally weak currency as long as Iran has not reached a new nuclear agreement with the West and sanctions remain in place.

Kamran Soltanizadeh, the head of the Iranian Exchangers Association, also mentioned another factor Sunday. He said that the Central Bank of Iran's decision on Saturday to allow exchange offices to buy foreign currencies gained from exports of petrochemicals and minerals helped the rise of the rial against the dollar. He predicted that the rial would further rebound in the following days over the decision. 

Rials long decline since early 2018 is to a large extent the result of US sanctions the former US President Donald Trump imposed when he withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. At that time the US dollar was at 35,000 rials and steadily began to rise, ultimately reaching 600,000 last week.

Since November, the US has tightened regulations on dollar transfers by Iraqi banks, from where Iran was smuggling some currency helping it to keep the rial relatively stable. This action further weakened the Iranian currency.

Iraq, whose official trade exchange with Iran amounts to approximately $14 billion a year, has struggled to pay Tehran for its imports of natural gas and electricity due to the US sanctions. Apparently, it decided to pay Iran in Iraqi dinars, which is not a fungible currency except in Iraq itself, and Iran began buying US dollars there and repatriating it. This caused a dollar shortage in Iraq since December and the dinar lost some value.

Ali Shariati, a member of the Iran-Iraq Chamber of Commerce and a businessman, said that when the Islamic Republic is unable to receive its money in dollars, it would be a win to be able to receive the funds in dinars. The Central Bank of Iraq is in control of payments in dinar, but according to the recent negotiations the US is sensitive about its dollars, so Iraq may have paid the Islamic Republic in dinars to avoid strict regulatory sensitivities, he added. He said that the Islamic Republic is not in a situation to choose currencies as one of the reasons behind the jump in the dollar rate was the interruption of the inflow of foreign currency from Iraq.

In February, Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Iraq, Fuad Hussein accompanied by Central Bank of Iraq Governor Ali al-Allaq met with both the State Department and with Treasury to discuss a host of economic issues, but an urgent issue was how to prevent Iran from using Iraq’s banking ties with the United States to launder US dollars and circumvent Washington’s sanctions. 

Iran claims its exports to Iraq are on the rise approaching $10 billion despite pressure by the United States on Baghdad to stop money smuggling from the Arab country to Iran.

Local media also said that what began to help the rial was intervention by the Central Bank of Iran when it injected $700 million in UAE dirhams last Sunday, February 26, into the Tehran’s foreign currency market and the rial began to rise from its all-time low of 600,000 against the US dollar.

After public outrage and criticism even by some regime loyalists, four men accused of viciously beating a woman in Tehransar were arrested.

Video footage of the attack on the mother outside a girls’ school near the capital Tehran on Wednesday went viral, with demands for answers flooding social media.

The police have denied any involvement in the incident which saw several men surrounding and assaulting the woman who was apparently accusing the government of responsibility for the attacks. One of the men who dragged the woman by the hair has been identified as a Basij militia official by social media users.

It is often difficult to differentiate plainclothes agents from Basij militiamen or members of the public. Plainclothes forces who could be affiliated with any of the many intelligence and military organizations have often been seen working in tandem with pro-government vigilantes, beating and arresting protesters, and even destroying people’s vehicles and breaking shop windows.

Another video posted on social media on Saturday shows plainclothes forces violently arresting two schoolgirls in Karaj, forcing them into a car before driving them away.

While speculation grows as to the perpetrators of the poisonings in the girls’ schools, which began in the religious city of Qom in November and has now reached scores of schools around the country, even ministers have pointed the finger towards the government.

Last week, deputy education minister Younes Panahi said that "It was found that some people wanted all schools, especially girls' schools, to be closed," confirming fears that the regime is cracking down on girls who have been at the forefront of the Women, Life, Freedom movement since September.

"It has been revealed that the chemical compounds used to poison students are not war chemicals, and the poisoned students do not need aggressive treatment, and a large percentage of the chemical agents used are treatable," he told a press conference.

The five months of protests, sparked by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini in September, arrested by the morality police for not wearing her headscarf appropriately, has been supported nationally by schools, images being shared of girls burning pictures of the Supreme Leader, burning headscarves and cutting their hair.

Parents have staged rallies outside education departments in several Iranian cities in protest of the authorities’ failure to address the poisoning attacks. A number of the protesters were reportedly arrested by security forces.

Investigations to find the attacker of the woman outside the school is difficult due to the existence of numerous and parallel organizations, Mohsen Borhani, a criminologist and professor of law at Tehran University said in a tweet after the police’s claim that the man beating the woman outside the school was not one of theirs: “Woe to the nation who does not know which organization is responsible for beating it up!”

In another tweet, Borhani told the authorities that had they not prevented people from taking videos during protests, or forcing owners of CCTVs to delete their footage of the protest, hundreds responsible for attacks similar to the one on the woman outside the Tehransar school would have been identified. He added that authorities did not truly wish to prevent such acts of aggression against the public.

During recent unrest, protesters often noticed certain clothing items and accessories such as baseball caps or crossbody sling bags and shirt tails draped over their trousers or even two watches, one on each wrist, to allow them recognize each other from others on the scene. In one case a protester reported that plainclothes forces were all wearing red t-shirts that day.

In an interview with the Iranian Labour News Agency (ILNA) on January 8, interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi denied that there were any plainclothes forces on the ground and claimed all security forces dealing with protesters were uniformed.

However, protesters claimed plainclothes forces who often moved in groups of four, riding on two motorbikes and carrying teasers and walkie-talkies, even openly carried weapons. In one of the videos from a university in Tehran in November, a plainclothes agent is seen drawing a gun from his sling bag and taking a shot.

Tens of Iranians gathered for the rally on Saturday in front of Malley’s office calling on the Biden administration for his dismissal.
Malley has been under fire for his soft approach in dealing with the Iranian regime in the past months and is one of those blamed for the breakdown in nuclear talks last year.

Back in October, he stated in a tweet that Iranians were protesting to have the Islamic Republic “respect their human rights and dignity,” a statement Iranians refuted, claiming he undermined the wider message that Iranians want a new, democratic government and not respect from an oppressive regime.

Iranians feel Malley is out of touch with the needs of Iranians and do not trust his hand in taking the nuclear talks to the next level. "He underestimates the levels the regime will go to," said one protester who asked not to be named. "He has no idea what living under this oppression is like."

Protesters plan to hold weekly events outside the State Department to demand Malley's dismissal.

Another participant told Iran International that such events show the helplessness Iranians in the diaspora feel, unable to express their anger with the regime and its brutal crackdown on innocent civilians exercising their right to protest.

After his tweet in October, New-York based activist Masih Alinejad, demanded Malley resign. “By continually misrepresenting Iranian’s rejection of Islamic Republic, he is hurting the US administration standing among the people of Iran.,” Alinejad said.

In response to the criticism, Malley told Iran International at the time: “Neither I nor the US government can claim to speak for protesters. Only they can do that, and I’d never intend to imply otherwise.”

The revelations were published in the left-wing Israeli daily, Haaretz, which found that over the past seven years, 92 cargo flights flown by Azerbaijani Silk Way Airlines have landed at the Ovda air base, the only airfield in Israel through which explosives may be flown into and out of the country.
According to the report, during times of conflict between the Republic of Azerbaijan and Armenia, the number of flights between Israel and Azerbaijan also increases.
In return for military support, Azerbaijan has allowed Israel's secret service, Mossad, to set up a forward branch to monitor what is happening in Iran," according to Haaretz. Baku has even prepared a dedicated airfield intended to aid Israel in case it decides to attack Iranian nuclear sites, according to the investigation.

Azerbaijan and Israel have been increasingly public in their growing ties. While Israel has had an embassy in Azerbaijan since the 1990s, just in January, Azerbaijan formally appointed its first ambassador to the Jewish state.
Iran continued to dominate headlines in Israel over the weekend in the wake of the visit of the chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi. In Tehran, Grossi claimed that an Israeli attack on the Iranian nuclear facilities is against the law.

It was met with a harsh response from Netanyahu: "Rafael Grossi is a worthy gentleman who said something unworthy. Against which law? Is Iran, which openly calls for our destruction, permitted to defend the destructive weapons that would slaughter us? Are we permitted to defend ourselves? It is clear that we are and it is clear that we will do so."

He added, "Nothing will deter us from defending our country and preventing our enemies from eliminating the state of the Jews."

The poisonings, targeting girls' schools since November, have been ramped up this week with hundreds more girls falling sick across Iran.

Social media videos surfaced on Sunday show that students were poisoned in many cities, including Fouladshahr and some other cities in Esfahan (Isfahan) province, Karaj and Fardis in Alborz province, Tabriz, Yazd, Hamedan, Shiraz, Ramhormoz and Mahshahr in Khuzestan province, Qazvin, Gonbad-e Kavus in Golestan, and the capital Tehran. Only In the city of Yazd, at least eight schools were attacked on Sunday.

On Saturday alone, schools in 33 cities were targeted by the same gas that has already affected around 1,500 students in recent weeks.

The scale of the intentional poisoning of female students -- which started in the religious city of Qom and spread further throughout the country and reached schools in small towns and villages -- has stepped up in recent weeks, becoming a daily occurrence.

State media is trying to downplay the seriousness of the incidents, with some officials such as former MP Jamileh Kadivar calling the attacks “mass hysteria.”

Many, such as Dr. Mohammadreza Hashemian, a doctor in the special care department of Masih Daneshvari Hospital, fear the poisonings are being led by regime authorities. He said that the gases used to poison the students are a combination of different chemicals, which it is "not possible for ordinary people" to access.

With women and girls having been at the forefront of protests, burning headscarves and cutting their hair in defiance of the regime, it is believed that the attacks are a coordinated effort to deter the young students from supporting ongoing unrest, triggered by the death of the young woman, Mahsa Amini. Her death in morality police custody after being arrested for the inappropriate use of her headscarf, has triggered national protest since September.

The patterns of the school attacks are similar to chemical attacks committed by radical Islamists in Chechnya and the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The regime’s Health Minister Bahram Eynollahi admitted that the girls have suffered "mild poison" attacks, while Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli said on Saturday, "In field studies, suspicious samples have been found, which are being investigated... to identify the causes of the students' illness, and the results will be published as soon as possible."

Outraged by the Islamic Republic’s inaction and reluctance to identify and arrest those behind the attacks, many parents, students and other activists have held demonstrations outside the buildings of the Education Ministry across the country, but security forces attacked the gatherings and arrested some of the parents and students.

In a gathering of parents outside an Education Ministry building in Tehran, people chanted "Basij, Guards, you are our Daesh," likening the Revolutionary Guards and other security forces to the Islamic State group. Comparing the Islamic Republic with the Taliban, protesters also chanted "Death to the Taliban, whether in Iran or Afghanistan".

Also on Sunday, a group of about 420 Iranian political and civil activists issued a statement to media, describing the poisoning of students as a "criminal act" that has caused "national concern".

On Friday, the United Nations human rights office in Geneva called for a transparent investigation into the attacks. Countries including the US and Germany have also voiced concern.

Nobel Peace Prize winner and human rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi says there is no doubt about the role of the regime in the mass poisoning attacks. Iran's exiled queen Farah Pahlavi also condemned the attacks, saying the Islamic Republic is showing parts of "its impure nature to the world." 

Exiled prince Reza Pahlavi also tweeted, “Iranian girls are being poisoned at schools across Iran. I urge the international community to bring pressure on the regime and demand access for investigations on-the-ground in Iran. Khamenei and his regime must be stopped.”

Canada-based activist Hamed Esmaeilion, whose daughter and wife were killed by the IRGC, also decried the school attacks, calling on the international community and democratic governments not to remain silent. “Will you finally stand with the people of Iran and expel the Islamic Republic Ambassadors?” he asked.