Who’s Behind Iran’s Suspected School Poisonings?

Welcome to today’s Morning Brief, where we’re looking at Iran’s suspected schoolgirl poisonings, South Korea and Japan’s thawing relations, and U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen’s meeting plans. 

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More than 1,000 Iranian students have grown sick from suspected poisoning attacks widely believed to be targeting schoolgirls in a mysterious wave of cases that has sparked alarm and outrage. 

Since the suspected poisonings were first reported in November 2022, students have reported experiencing headaches, nausea, heart palpitations, and even smelling tangerines. There haven’t been any fatalities, but hundreds of students have reportedly been hospitalized, and authorities said there have been cases in at least 52 schools across more than 10 cities. On Saturday, Iranian Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi said investigators uncovered “suspicious samples;” earlier, other officials reported finding nitrogen gas. 

Frustrated parents have taken to the streets, with protests sweeping cities, including Tehran, over the weekend. Some parents have clashed with authorities, whereas others have kept their children home from school. 

There is “a sense of panic taking over, and [there] is a very swift distance from panicking about the well-being of your family to politically mobilizing against [Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei]’s regime,” said Alex Vatanka, director of the Iran Program at the Middle East Institute. “Khamenei knows that, and that’s why he has to try and see if he can do some damage control.”

On Monday, Khamenei warned that the intentional poisoning of students was an “unforgivable crime.” “If it is proven deliberate, those perpetrators of this unforgivable crime should be sentenced to capital punishment,” state media reported him saying. 

But as anger mounts, a lot remains unknown. It is still unclear who might be behind such poisonings, how exactly they are being carried out, or what the motive is. Some observers have suggested that they are the regime’s retaliatory acts against the country’s recent protests. Iran’s deputy health minister said, “Some people wanted all schools, especially girls’ schools, to be closed down”—although he later backtracked. 

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, who only launched an investigation months after the first cases were reported, has accused “enemies of Iran” of attempting to undermine the country’s security. 

“Either way, whether it’s foreign intelligence services that are doing it or this is happening by elements inside the regime, it is a massive, massive embarrassment for them,” Vatanka said. “They don’t have control.”

Thawing relations? South Korea will establish a private sector-financed fund to compensate Korean victims of forced labor under Japanese occupation during World War II, the government announced on Monday. The issue has been at the center of a historical dispute between the two countries. The announcement marks a “groundbreaking new chapter of cooperation and partnership between two of the United States’ closest allies,” said U.S. President Joe Biden.

According to Reuters, Japanese companies aren’t expected to make any contributions but won’t be blocked from donating. The announcement drew criticism from opposition leaders and some of the victims, who saw the decision as capitulation and argued the money should come from Japanese companies. 

McCarthy and Taiwan. U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen have decided to meet in California, not Taipei, as a result of the island’s security concerns, the Financial Times reported. The location is less likely to antagonize Beijing in the way that former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taipei did last year. According to Reuters, their meeting is expected to take place in the coming weeks. 

Belarus sentences Tsikhanouskaya. Belarus has sentenced Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, an exiled opposition leader who fled the country in 2020, to 15 years in jail. She was charged with treason and conspiring to take power from authoritarian leader Aleksandr Lukashenko, who has now been in power for nearly three decades. 

“15 years of prison. This is how the regime ‘rewarded’ my work for democratic changes in Belarus,” she tweeted. In 2021, FP’s Amy Mackinnon wrote a profile chronicling how Tsikhanouskaya came to challenge Lukashenko’s brutal rule.

Estonia’s election. Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas’s center-right party won a clear victory in the country’s parliamentary vote. Throughout the war in Ukraine, Kallas has been a staunch supporter of Kyiv. “What Ukraine needs today are weapons to fight back the aggressor and liberate its territories,” she told Foreign Policy in June 2022. “We need to help Ukraine win.”

• The Conversation About Ukraine Is Cracking Apart by Stephen M. Walt

Toblerone chocolate bars aren’t allowed to have an image of the famous Matterhorn mountain on their packaging anymore because it would violate Switzerland’s Swissness law, which restricts how the country’s national symbols can be used in business and marketing. 

Toblerone’s U.S. owner, Mondelez International, announced it is transferring some of its production to Slovakia; as a result, the chocolate no longer makes the cut. Toblerone’s packaging will now have a “modernized and streamlined mountain logo,” Mondelez said.