Friday, March 29, 2024
HomeIran News NowIran Culture & SocietyIran’s Coronavirus, Death Toll Reaches 2000 as Regime Continues Inaction

Iran’s Coronavirus, Death Toll Reaches 2000 as Regime Continues Inaction

Iranian regime officials acknowledge that the coronavirus outbreak has spun out of control
Iranian regime officials acknowledge that the coronavirus outbreak has spun out of control

The People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI, Mujahedin-e Khalq or MEK) and the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) drew upon information from a nationwide intelligence network to determine that the number of fatalities had already exceeded 2,000 by March 7.


And although the regime’s Health Ministry’s acknowledgment of 16,000 hospitalizations represents a five-fold increase over the number of cases that were being officially recognized just days earlier, it still falls short of the estimates earlier published by the MEK or those that by Iranian doctors more than a week earlier. 

The novel virus strain that responsible for the pandemic was first discovered in Wuhan, China last year and has since been dubbed Covid-19. So far, it has been deemed responsible for more than 100,000 cases of illness worldwide, of which roughly 3,500 have proven fatal. Reports indicate that Iraq became subject to the infection only fairly recently. It has recorded 38 instances of Covid-19, with two deaths. Most, if not all of these cases are traceable to Iran. 

As of Friday, the regime’s Health Ministry officially acknowledged almost 16,000 instances of domestic hospitalization that are believed to involve the virus. Of these, about one-third have been confirmed via testing.  

As the situation worsens across Iran, the regime has demonstrated its incompetent response and for deliberately misinforming the public in an effort to save face and preserve a veneer of national unity. 

Among the regime’s earliest public acknowledgements of an outbreak were statements that cited Covid-19 as a reason why turnout for the February 21 parliamentary elections were “acceptable.” These statements had been preceded by weeks of government pleas for voter participation, even as MEK resistance units organized a nationwide boycott. The turnout for this election was the lowest in the 41 years since the anti-monarchic Revolution. 

Despite using fears of an epidemic as a tool for creating media narratives about the election, the regime’s authorities continued to downplay or simply deny the reality of the situation for several more days, during which time they admitted the existence of only about a dozen fatal cases of coronavirus. This figure began to climb after a local official in the city of Qom informed reformist media that 50 people had died of the illness in that locality alone. 

Since then, the regime’s estimates have grown at an accelerated rate but have continued to lag behind independent reports.  

It is unclear to what extent these independent reports influenced regional recognition of a crisis, but since the last week of February, a number of Iran’s neighbors have either restricted or halted non-essential travel to and from Iran. In some cases, these decisions came only after the confirmation of local infections among people who had recently returned from visits to Qom and other Iranian cities. The spread of these infections was likely exacerbated by the regime authorities’ refusal to implemented quarantines of affected areas. 

In a nutshell, due to the regime’s criminal cover-up and inaction, Iran has clearly become a vector for international spread of Covid-19. And this fact is now threatening economic and political consequences that may exceed what the mullahs were attempting to forestall by downplaying the initial outbreak. 

The regime’s failure to quarantine Qom – apparently the epicenter of the domestic crisis – was no doubt influenced by the religious sentiment of the theocratic dictatorship as well as the financial concerns of a sanctions-damaged government at most importantly the regime’s elections.  

On Thursday, it was announced that regime’s authorities would begin manning checkpoints in order to limit travel between different cities. And the following day, those authorities stated that they might use force in executing this mission. This is sure to prove alarming to Iranian citizens, many of whom participated in a nationwide anti-government uprising last November and thus witnessed some of the worst government repression since the early years of the revolution. 

According to the MEK, over 1,500 protesters were killed during that uprising. The regime’s backlash also established an atmosphere of stepped-up repression outside the context of the protests, and this may have contributed to the scale of the secrecy surrounding the coronavirus outbreak. Dozens of people were arrested in late February for “rumor-mongering” after they shared independent estimates of the infection and mortality rates. And on Friday it was reported that one additional person had been arrested for taking video of body bags piled up in a Qom morgue. 

This sort of tightening of the regime’s grip on domestic affairs would make sense in the context of a crisis that threatens both public panic and widespread recognition of the regime’s vulnerability. But it would also make sense in the context of a potential loss of influence in the broader Gulf region. As NCRI have long identified regime’s meddling in other countries is one of its central pillars of existence. And when this is undermined by circumstances like border closures and restricted travel, one might expect the regime’s strategy to shift toward focus on other pillars, including domestic repression. 

This is not to say that the coronavirus outbreak is sufficient on its own to prevent Iran from maintaining its influence within foreign countries like Iraq. But to the extent that that outbreak is reducing trade and exchanges of personnel between the countries, it may very well impede the Iranian regime’s ability to push back against the effects of anti-Iranian regime protests within the populations of foreign countries. 

Iraq in particular has been rocked by such protests since October. As with the subsequent protests in Iran, this activism was met with harsh repression. According to the leaders of the Iraqi nationalist movement, upwards of 800 people have been killed so far, many of them at the hands of Iran-backed militias that hold outsized influence in the country. But this killing appears to have had little effect on the public’s commitment to pushing back Iranian influence and rooting out corruption within the Iraqi government. 

Engulfed with domestic, regional and international crises, the Iranian regime is neither capable nor willing to combat the coronavirus outbreak. So it is necessary to remind the points made by Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the NCRI’s president-elect in her video message, in which she said:  

  1. Direct and vent your [Iranian people] anger at the regime. Young people and especially university students must use their creativity and improvise to break through the obstacles and open the way. We are the ones to rise up to protect our country and society, and ensure its health, security and future. We must encourage everyone to show their outrage, and to stage protests and strikes to any extent possible.
  2. Medical and health care resources must be removed from the monopoly of the IRGC and the agencies affiliated with Khamenei and placed at the disposal of the public to be used under the supervision of honorable and freedom-loving physicians and nurses.
  3. Supporters of the PMOI and the Iranian Resistance, Resistance Units, resistance councils, and popular councils, must aid and assist those who have contracted the virus and help save the lives of our compatriots, while taking all the necessary protective measures for themselves and using full medical equipment.
  4. I urge all my compatriots to inform the public through every possible means of the news of the Coronavirus, and the names and number of those who have lost their lives, to foil the regime’s conspiracy of maintaining silence in this regard.
  5. The UN Security Council, the UN Secretary General, the UN Human Rights Council, the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and other relevant international organizations must condemn the clerical regime for its continued criminal cover-up of the spread of Coronavirus in Iran, thus jeopardizing the lives of the people in Iran and other countries. I also urge them to prevent a major humanitarian catastrophe by taking immediate action to save the lives and health of prisoners, particularly the political prisoners who are under torture and double pressure and denials.