Iranian Diaspora In US, Canada Slam Chemical Attacks On Schoolgirls
Demonstrations took place across the United States and Canada on Saturday to condemn the more than three months of chemical attacks on girls’ schools around Iran.
Demonstrations took place across the United States and Canada on Saturday to condemn the more than three months of chemical attacks on girls’ schools around Iran.
The United States is home to the world's largest Iranian community outside the country with almost 400,000 living there.
The Iranian diaspora led rallies in cities including New York and Washington, where hundreds of participants marched in front of the White House to demand the support of the US government and the international community for the protests inside Iran.
Similar events were also held in San Diego and Philadelphia. In Canada, Iranians joined forces in Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver to show solidarity with the hundreds of girls affected by mysterious chemical attacks in scores of schools across the country since November.
In Toronto, protesters held a rally in front of the Parliament of Ontario province, chanting slogans to censure the attacks on schoolgirls in different cities of Iran including Tehran, Qom, Karaj, Boroujerd, etc.
The government has aired ‘confessions’ of those allegedly responsible for the attacks which started three months ago as a man and his daughter forced to speak to national TV. The broadcast has all the trademarks of the regime’s forced confessions.
General Yahya Rahim Safavi was echoing sentiment expressed by all forces in Iran who are considered “Principlist” or loyal to Khamenei, who for years has espoused a policy of siding with China and Russia against the United States.
China appeared to be the power that brokered a deal between Tehran and Riyadh to restore diplomatic relations after seven years of open animosity and rivalry. One Iranian commentator said Sunday that the agreement signed in Beijing was not really a bilateral deal, but a tripartite agreement between Iran, China and Saudi Arabia.
In fact, Tehran and Riyadh had been negotiating since 2021 in Baghdad, with Iraqi mediation and could have restored relations without Beijing’s mediation. Former Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafal al-Kadhimi in an interview with Asharq Al-Awsat published Sunday, says that most of the talks took place in Baghdad.
At this point we do not know what brought China into the picture, except assuming that either Iran or Saudi Arabia insisted on it. If the demand came from the Saudis, it could mean one thing, showing displeasure with the Biden administration, which is left picking up the pieces.
Khamenei’s advisor Safavi in his remarks did not repeat the typical rhetoric of war and confrontation, advising that Iran and Saudi Arabia should exhibit rationality for the sake of West Asia. He said that restoration of bilateral ties was not against any regional countries. But he quickly added that it is natural for the United States to be worried and try to disrupt it.
Speculations abound in Iranian media about the potential dividends of peace with Saudi Arabia. Some see it as an Iranian victory to potentially disrupt a possible Saudi peace deal with Israel. Others speak of economic benefits for the Islamic Republic, going as far as claiming that Iran, Saudi Arabia and Russia can create a powerful oil cartel with Chinese backing and put the West on the defensive.
Safavi in his remarks also mentioned a similar outlook. “Iran should regard the West’s entanglement in Ukraine and the Taiwan tensions as an opportunity and based on shared interests with Russia and China move ahead with a clear strategy, given US threats against all three countries.”
The quick face-about of Iran hardliners and Khamenei loyalists regarding Saudi Arabia is being highlighted by their rivals, the reformists, who point out that there was no need to attack the Saudi embassy in Tehran in January 2016 and create tensions for seven years.
They argue that hardliners were calling for the destruction of the Saudi monarchy and equating the country with “Zionists”, calling it a US puppet. Meanwhile, Tehran spent tens of billions of dollars to finance the war in Yemen against Riyadh and provoked the ire of Persian Gulf Arab states.
Now, facing more international isolation and a broken economy, the Khamenei camp is suddenly praising friendship with Riyadh, something they could have done all along.
Safavi insisted that the agreement with Saudi Arabia was “a political earthquake” and the end of “American hegemony in the region”. We this deal, the “post-American era starts in the Persian Gulf region.”
He went on to say that “The Chinese are determined to become the top global economy by 2030 and this agreement brokered by the Chinese is the second big blow by China against America.”
The attacks that started three months ago have continued without any apparent effort by the government to seriously pursue the perpetrators or explain to terrified parents and students what was happening in so many schools.
In its statement, the ministry attributed some of the poisoning attacks to “pranks” by students using “foul smelling and harmless substances” in an attempt to get their classes dismissed.
“Among the detainees there are individuals with hostile motivations,” the statement said, adding that these individuals meant to cause fear and panic among the people to shut down schools and cast the blame on the regime.
“These individuals are under investigation to reveal their possible connection with terrorist organizations such as the monafeghin,” the statement said. Iranian authorities always refer to the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK) as monafeghin (hypocrites).
The statement reveals very little about the arrests but two days earlier the local channel of the state television in Fars province aired the so-called ‘confessions’ of a man and his daughter arrested and accused of attacking schools with N2 gas canisters. The statement provided no names for those arrested or any other information.
Many ordinary Iranians have been suspicious of involvement of the regime itself, or religious extremists protected by the regime, in the school attacks and call the acts “state terrorism”.
“There is strong suspicion that the purpose of the attacks is quashing the Woman, Life, Freedom movement by instilling fear among girls and their families,” an umbrella teachers' association said while calling the attacks “bioterrorism” and demanding Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and other top religious figures to condemn the attacks expressly and decisively.
Diaspora Iranian held protests Saturday in 70 cities around the world to demand action to stop the school attacks.
The ministry said in its statement that there is a “considerable drop” in school poisoning attacks although seven more schools were affected on Saturday and tens of students had to be taken to hospital.
Attacks were reported in southwestern Khuzestan province where four schools were targeted. Tens of poisoned students had to be taken to hospitals also in southern Fars, western Kordestan and in northern Gilan provinces.
In a report Saturday, the judiciary claimed that “less than ten percent” of students reported poisoned so far had inhaled “an irritant gas which is not of weapons grade or deadly” and the remaining ninety percent were only affected by stress and other psychological factors.
In an article entitled “Casting Light On Psychological Operations Of Criminals In Student Poisoning Incidents” on Tuesday, the hardliner Mashregh news website accused a banned teachers’ association of using the attacks to wage psychological war against the Islamic Republic to revitalize the protest movement.
The article claimed that it was the MEK that described the school poisonings as ‘chemical attacks’ for the first time and alleged a connection between MEK and union activists who also referred to the incidents as chemical attacks on schools.
Earlier this month, the association urged its members and others to stage protests to demand urgent resolution to school attacks as well as teacher’s own problems including a wage increase for the next year that takes the factor of inflation into account.
In response to the association’s call, teachers and parents held rallies in dozens of cities and chanted slogans such as "death to the child-killing regime".
“Think-tanks of security and intelligence bodies are projecting their own responsibility over the poisoning of students and building new legal cases against union and civil activist,” Mohammad Habibi, spokesman of the Iran Teachers’ Trade Association, said in an Instagram post Saturday.
Habibi vowed that teachers would continue to defend “our children and their achievements [in the protest movement].” “Our message to them is clear: we will not withdraw [against pressures by the security forces].”
