Official assurances that attacks on Iraqi students at Iran’s Semnan University have been contained have failed to quell questions over what sparked the violence, and whether growing anti-Iraqi and anti-Arab sentiment in Iran played a role.
The questions center on whether nationalist hostility and anger over financial and economic hardship caused by sanctions and war drove a group of Iranians to attack Iraqi students at their residences.
News outlet Shabaka 964 quoted traders and residents in Iran as saying that “an influential segment of Iranian society can no longer tolerate seeing even the small numbers of Iraqis passing through Iran.”
“An Iranian who supports Supreme Leader Khamenei sees an Iraqi as being under the Trump administration’s control, while an Iranian who supports the overthrow of the supreme leader’s regime sees an Iraqi as a supporter of the Popular Mobilization Forces and the supreme leader, and perhaps as someone involved in killing dissidents,” they added.
Attack begins
The incident began on Sunday when two heavily intoxicated Iranians tried to force their way into the students’ residential building. The students confronted the intruders and removed them from the building to prevent any misconduct and safeguard the premises and its residents.
The situation then escalated rapidly, with about 150 people gathering around and inside the building and attacking the Iraqi students. Several students suffered physical harm and injuries, while their personal property was damaged and the building’s windows were smashed as they tried to repel the attack and shelter themselves inside.
However, the Iraqi cultural attaché in Tehran denied that any students had been injured and described the incident as a “personal” dispute that had not been planned by the Iranian group.
Video testimonies
However, the return of some Iranians to the students’ residence the following day lends weight to unofficial accounts that describe the attack as deliberate and linked to resentment among some Iranians over the presence of Iraqis in the country.
Iraqi students appeared in video testimonies urging fellow students not to leave their residences and to leave Semnan province and its university because the area had “become dangerous and unsafe” for Iraqis.
They also said some Iranians had carried knives to attack Iraqis as they went shopping in nearby markets.
Follow-up committee
After Iraq’s Foreign Ministry faced criticism over its delayed response to appeals posted on social media by some of the students who were attacked, the ministry said on Monday that it had sent a committee to Iran’s Semnan province to follow up on the incident.
The ministry said in a statement that it had “followed with great concern the attack by a number of Iranian citizens on several Iraqi students at their residence in Semnan province in Iran.”
It added that “Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein directed the Iraqi Embassy in Tehran to ascertain the circumstances of the incident. The embassy sent a committee to check on the students, liaise with the relevant Iranian authorities and follow the course of the investigation, stressing the need for legal action against those responsible.”
The statement praised “the measures taken by the Iranian authorities to protect the students and transport them to their university to sit for their examinations.”
One-month leave
Following the Foreign Ministry’s statement, the Iraqi Embassy in Tehran said the crisis involving Iraqi students in Semnan province had been contained and that they had been granted one month’s leave.
The embassy said in a statement that “with the participation of the Iraqi Embassy and the Iraqi cultural mission, a delegation traveled to Semnan province to examine on the ground the circumstances of the crisis involving Iraqi students and directly assess their situation.”
It said the delegation “held meetings with university officials, Semnan provincial officials and the relevant authorities with the aim of addressing the aftermath of the incident and ensuring the safety of Iraqi students.”
“The crisis has been fully contained, and the Iraqi students have been granted one month’s leave to help calm the situation and restore stability to the university environment,” it added.
Iranian judiciary takes action
Mohammad Sadegh Akbari, head of the judiciary in Iran’s Semnan province, said on Monday that two people involved in the attack on Iraqi students had been identified. He said the public prosecutor in the provincial capital had issued orders summoning them before the relevant security authority.
Akbari told Iran’s state news agency IRNA that “two people involved in the clash outside the residence of Iraqi students at Semnan University have been identified. Judicial investigations are continuing to identify all those responsible for the incident, and those involved will be dealt with in accordance with the law.”
Akbari said the provincial judiciary was examining all aspects of the incident thoroughly and that, once the investigation was complete, legal and judicial action would be taken against anyone found to have played a role in the clash and in the disruption of public order and security.
Attack ‘not a coincidence’
Commenting on the attack, journalist Muntazer Nasser, who spent part of his life in Iran, said it “was not a mere coincidence” but the result of “a long series of hate speech on Iranian social media, with no official Iraqi action to counter it.”
Nasser said in a Facebook post that he had been monitoring anti-Iraqi rhetoric on Iranian social media since October 2025, beginning with “an unsubstantiated accusation that an Iraqi student at the University of Hamadan had harassed an Iranian female student, which developed into large demonstrations across the city.”
Nasser said he believed the demonstration was “a form of protest against the Iranian regime, but fear of confronting it led people to vent their anger by protesting against the Iraqi student.”
“Hate speech against Iraqis then resurfaced through a series of widely circulated videos purportedly showing members of the Popular Mobilization Forces entering the country, according to the many accounts that shared them, to suppress popular protests.”
“The rhetoric then intensified alongside images of luxury Iraqi cars driving through Iran with Iraqi license plates, which were contrasted with the poverty endured by Iranian society,” he added.
Nasser also pointed to the kidnapping of a considerable number of Iraqis and, most recently, the beating of seven tourists in the northern Iranian region of Gilan about two weeks earlier by some local residents and in full view of Iranian police, according to his account.
Nasser said the Iraqi Embassy in Tehran “should have monitored the escalation of this rhetoric from an early stage, drawn up a plan to counter it and warned its citizens. If it was unable to protect them, it should have informed the Foreign Ministry so that it could intervene at a higher level.”
