EDITORIAL: Iran, Coronavirus Staggering Death Toll: Who’s To Blame?
Written by
The Editorial Board
This is while, according to the Tehran University Medical Sciences department, the number of people who have received two doses of the COVID-19 vaccine is less than 4% of the entire population.
Iran fares worse than 100 other countries in this regard. Many hospitals, like those in Isfahan province, are over capacity, with patients literally sleeping in hallways. The situation in cemeteries is “critical and unimaginable for the fifth time in recent months,” according to the state-run Fars news agency on August 25, 2021.
The horrendous situation is the result of the regime’s criminal negligence and, in fact, deliberate attempts to inflict mass casualties on a population that is ready to rise up and overthrow the theocracy. The regime is deliberately using the virus to prevent another uprising. That is why in March 2020, several months after the November 2019 uprisings, Khamenei called the virus a “blessing” for his regime.
Documents obtained by the main opposition Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) indicate that Iran’s National Emergency Organization was aware of community spread within the country even before the start of 2020. Yet it was not until mid-February of that year that authorities officially acknowledged the pandemic. In the interim, the regime organized a number of public gatherings and demonstrations including celebrations of the regime’s 40-year anniversary and a funeral for the eliminated Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani.
On February 26, 2020, as the virus was rapidly spreading in Iran, the regime’s president Hassan Rouhani refused to quarantine cities and said in comments carried by state-run TV: “We do not accept quarantine.” He added that quarantine is an additional “virus” imposed by the United States. The regime’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei similarly downplayed the virus on March 3, 2020, saying: “In my opinion, this is not a very grave calamity. There have been bigger ones.”
In a criminal order, on January 8, 2021, Khamenei strictly banned the import of American and British-made vaccines, which at the time were the only internationally recognized vaccines. American philanthropists were forced to cancel the planned delivery of over 100,000 doses to Iran.
A look back at the contradictory remarks made by Ali Khamenei and Hassan Rouhani over Covid19
Instead, Khamenei paved the way for the criminal and corrupt conglomerate of IRGC bandits to claim that they can produce “domestic vaccines,” thereby receiving exorbitant funding from the health ministry. Those claims, of course, turned out to be completely bogus.
The Barkat Pharmaceuticals Holding Company was in charge of producing the so-called domestic vaccines. This parent company owns 60.6 percent of the Alborz Investment Group, the second-largest pharmaceutical holding enterprise in the country. The company is owned by Execution of Imam Khomeini’s Order (EIKO), which is under Khamenei’s control.
A member of the regime’s parliament said on May 11, 2021, that of the 2 million imported vaccines from other sources, more than 200,000 doses have simply disappeared. Iranians have found that many of the available doses were making their way into the black market, where they resurfaced with price tags of up to 1,350 dollars each.
The regime has found an ally in the coronavirus. The Iranian people are struggling with the coronavirus and the virus of a criminal theocracy bent on inflicting mass casualties to hold onto power. But as the uprisings in July demonstrated, out of the ashes of coronavirus, an angry population will inevitably rise up once again to spell the end for the murderous regime.