Iran President Says Foreign Enemies Behind Poisonings at Girls’ Schools
The story of the alleged poison gas attacks targeting girls’ schools across Iran has just gotten even more bizarre, after Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in a Friday televised speech pointed the finger at foreign adversaries conducting a covert plot.
“This is a security project to cause chaos in the country whereby the enemy seeks to instil fear and insecurity among parents and students,” Raisi said, in what is typically code for Israel and the US.
According to Al Jazeera, “He did not say who those enemies were, although Iranian leaders habitually accuse the United States and Israel, among others, of acting against it.”
In another strange development: Separately, a senior Iranian official said a fuel tanker found next to a school in a Tehran suburb and which had also been spotted in two other cities was probably involved in the poisonings. Authorities seized the tanker and arrested its driver, said Reza Karimi Saleh, the deputy governor of the Pardis suburb.
Girls in up to 15 cities have been affected, Iranian authorities have said, in what are suspected to be mass poisonings. There’s been an estimated 30 incidents.
