The White House on Thursday said the Biden administration does not know what is causing the apparent poisoning of school girls in Iran and called on the Iranian government to conduct a thorough and transparent investigation.
“The news from Iran is deeply worrying. This – what, what could be the poisoning of young girls who are in school now,” said National Security Council spokesman John Kirby. “The truth is that at the moment we do not know what caused these complaints. We are seeing reports that the Iranian government is investigating this, this is the right course of action.
“We want these investigations to be thorough and complete, and we want them to be transparent. Little girls who go to school should only have to worry about learning. They shouldn’t have to worry about their own physical safety, but we just don’t know enough at the moment,” he added.
John Kirby, National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications, speaks during the daily press briefing in the James S Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House in Washington, DC on March 2, 2023.
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images
Kirby declined to say whether the US would consider sanctions in response to an intentional poisoning. He also declined to say whether the US would take the Iranian investigation at face value.
“Let’s first see what the results are here before we make any sort of hasty judgment,” he said. “We need to know, the world needs to know, certainly these little girls’ families need to know.”
Over the past three months, hundreds of young girls attending various schools in Iran appeared to have been overwhelmed by allegedly noxious fumes pouring into their classrooms, with some ending up weakened on hospital beds, state media and the Associated Press reported.
Iranian theocracy officials initially dismissed these incidents but now describe them as deliberate attacks on about 30 schools identified in local media reports, with some speculating they may be aimed at destroying schools for girls in this country of over 80 million people to close state media.
On Sunday, Iran’s state news agency IRNA filed several reports, including officials acknowledging the scale of the crisis.
“Following several poisonings of students in Qom schools, it was found that some people wanted all schools, especially girls’ schools, to be closed,” quoted IRNA Younes Panahi, a deputy health minister.
A health ministry spokesman, Pedram Pakaieen, said the poisoning was not from a virus or microbe, but neither was further explained.
Ali Reza Monadi, a member of the national parliament who sits on the education committee, described the poisoning as “deliberate”.
The “existence of the devil’s will to keep girls from education is a serious danger and is considered very bad news,” he said, according to IRNA. “We have to try to find roots for it”.