Over 245,600 people have lost their lives in Iran during the Covid-19 pandemic, reported the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) and the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI / MEK Iran). Recently the state-run media and regime officials have begun to acknowledge the commencement of a fourth wave.
The regime’s Health Minister, Saied Namaki, acknowledged on Monday that “this [fourth] wave is far more powerful than what some people are seeing. For the health apparatus, I am forecasting incredibly challenging days. We could have avoided where we are today.”
The regime seems undeterred, even pleased, with the exponentially rising Covid-19 fatalities. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has been quoted calling the virus a “blessing” and “test”. The regime has been able to utilize this huge loss of life to quell any possibility of popular uprisings.
Covid-19 was publicly denied having spread to Iran for almost two months. Once it could no longer be denied, the regimes Health ministry and associated officials attempted to deemphasize the effects of the virus.
The ‘private sector’, controlled by the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) and Khamenei are the ones facilitating the importation of vaccines as Khamenei banned the entry of vaccines on 8 January 2021. This decision speaks by itself, the regime wants to spread Covid-19 to more Iranians.
It’s heavily indicative that the regime intended for the effects of the virus to worsen as the country enters its fourth wave. Iranian Health experts and some regime officials have warned that the regime’s refusal to instate a travel ban during Nowruz (Persian New Year) this March would incur more infections and mortalities.
Reports indicate that regime officials have received a vaccine and opted to ‘advice’ people not to travel instead of issue a travel ban.
Mohammad Reza Mahboubfar, a member of the Anti-Coronavirus Task Force, told the state-run Aftab-e Yazd daily on 14 December 2020, “The Covid-19 vaccine has been imported illegally from accredited countries. It is passed among elites, officials, and their family members.”
The state-run Jahan-e Sanat daily said, on 15 March that “since early March 2020, there have been sharp contradictions between officials’ statements about Covid-19. Some officials joked about the disease and denied it had entered the country.
These cases have led to a slow pace of patient care and an increase in the overall prevalence of pandemic mortality. Some officials are involved in various fringes when they do not have time to make the right decisions about issues and crises.
Even in the face of problems, they send the wrong message to society. Just when they have to give the right information to people to gain their trust, they spread untrue and false messages in society.”
“Although the coronavirus crisis delays the conflict, delaying it at the cost of overwhelming issues is a challenge in society. In other words, when society is freed from the clutches of this disease, political, social, and economic faults will begin to move with greater destructive power,” Jahan-e Sanat daily on15 March warned regime officials, calling people’s uprising a “conflict.”
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and People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran – MEK IRAN – YouTube
