Iran COVID-19 Crisis: Death Toll Rapidly Surging, an Emerging Tragedy

Written by
Mohammad Sadat Khansari
Nearly 52,000 people have lost their lives due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Iran, according to the Iranian Resistance. The Iranian regime, although downplaying crisis, announced over 108 deaths, the highest death toll it has announced in two months. This is sign of an emerging humanitarian tragedy.

Although the regime, since the beginning of the COVID-19, tried to downplay this crisis, after weeks of denying its existence, the number of infections and deaths announced by the mullahs’ Health Ministry, in addition to the real death toll announced by the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) or citizen journalists, confirm how deep the coronavirus crisis is in Iran and that a huge humanitarian catastrophe awaits the Iranian people.

Sima Sadat Lari, the spokesperson of the regime’s Health Ministry, in this regard said: “The provinces of West Azerbaijan, Hormozgan, Khuzestan, Kurdistan, Kermanshah, Sistan & Baluchistan, and Bushehr are in code red status. This virus is unpredictable and may catch us off guard at any moment”

The state-run IRNA news agency reported: “A week of death awaiting Kurdistan. We should expect to experience a week filled with death… Hospitals that only had 50 coronavirus patients now have no more room to admit new patients. There are seven times more coronavirus patients than the previous wave of infection.”

In addition, the state-run Fars News Agency on June 13 reported: “The governor of Western Azerbaijan province sounded the alarm about a decrease in the average age of coronavirus victims and said: ‘In the past weeks, we’ve witnessed a decrease in the age of the deceased.’”

Instead of helping people, the regime is pursuing the herd immunity policy, which only shows how little the mullahs care for people’s lives, despite having the resources to help them.

The regime’s president Hassan Rouhani and supreme leader Ali Khamenei are forcing people back to work and have reopened religious sites to profit from them. In line with Khamenei and Rouhani, today Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, head of the regime’s parliament, also asked for a quick reopening of all the religious sites across Iran. He said: “One point was that friends were criticizing the prolongation of the closure of mosques during the coronavirus outbreak. They believed that religious centers and mosques could implement the protocols of the Coronavirus Combat Headquarters much earlier and that mosques and the holy shrines would not be closed for so long.”

The Iranian regime denied the existence for the deadly COVID-19 crisis in Iran for weeks to have a larger turnout during its sham parliamentary elections, which was anyhow boycotted. Yet, those of the regime’s supporters who participated became the hosts of the coronavirus and spread it across Iran. In addition, while other countries stopped their flight to China and refused accepting Chinese tourists, as the country where the virus was first detected, the mullahs’ regime, for its economic and political interests, continued its flights to China and accepted Chinese tourists. Revolutionary Guards’ (IRGC) Mahan Air played an important role in this regard.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, the regime has been trying to downplay the crisis. The regime did issue a national quarantine order. Yet, it quickly ordered people back to work, since the mullahs, unlike other countries, were not financially helping people and more people were joining the army of starving people, and the possibility of a nationwide uprising was looming.

Since the first days of the coronavirus outbreak, the Iranian regime, has been trying to use the COVID-19 crisis as a tool to quell Iran’s restive society. However, the mullahs are not able to do this and have been experiencing their utter fear of what they call the “post-coronavirus” era.

In this regard, the state-run Etemad online published an interview with Mohsen Rannani, one of the regime’s experts, on June 14. Rannani, while calling the nationwide Iran protests from 2009 to November 2019 an “earthquake,” said:

“This decade will end with a social, economic and institutionalized coronavirus earthquake. This earthquake will change many of the country’s institutional and historical structures and will have a profound impact on all economic, social, and cultural spheres.”

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