The Iranian school poisoning attacks are the cluster of reported poisonings, mostly at girls' schools, that began on 9 Azar 1401 (30 November 2022) in Qom, in the middle of Woman Life Freedom, and continued for more than three months. Parents pulled daughters from class. Officials contradicted one another. A later government committee denied that anyone had been poisoned and blamed "hostile elements" with stink bombs. This note does not treat a single chemical mechanism as proven in a court. It records the timeline, the scale in Iranian data, and the state's effort to close the file. The events followed the 1401 uprising. They are their own event, not a second name for that rising.¹ Iran International's later Woman Life Freedom report² treats the poisonings in the same timeline.

Scale reported

Radio Farda's Farsi data file starts at Honarestan-e Nur in Qom's Yazdanshahr, where 18 schoolgirls fell ill, then a boys' boarding school in Sari, then Qom again in volume from 8 Bahman. The chain ran past 23 Esfand. Officials said medical services were given to 13,000 students. The same dataset placed cases in 30 provinces, with Qom (45 schools) and Tehran (42) at the top, then Lorestan and Ardabil (19 each). Those are compiled reports, not a finished forensic census.¹

The first cases came while girls were still in the Woman Life Freedom street. Families and teachers treated the pattern as an attack on girls' schools, not as mass nerves. Officials later spoke of stress. Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi used that line. Other officials, at other hours, called some Qom and Borujerd cases deliberate. Ali Khamenei called the poisonings an unforgivable crime¹ and then the state's own later report said no one had been poisoned.²

Official denial

Iran International's Farsi account of the Islamic Republic's second special-committee report on the 1401 uprising records the committee blaming "biased and hostile elements" for throwing stink bombs, tear gas, and pepper spray to shut schools, and stating that "in this plot no person was poisoned or died." That is the state's closing story. It sits against months of hospital visits, parental protests, and the 13,000 figure officials had already used.²

This archive holds Iranian school poisoning attacks and related schoolgirl labels.

This archive

"Iranian school poisoning attacks" is gathered here. Individual student memorials that do not name the poisonings stay on their own pages.