Iran said Saturday that it may not close its sanctions-affected economy, even as the deadliest coronavirus outbreak in the Middle East worsens with record-record deaths and a buildup of infections.
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Iran will have to continue “its economic, social and cultural activities in compliance with fitness protocols,” President Hassan Rohani said in a televised assembly of the organization underway on viruses.
“The simplest solution is to close down all activities, (but) the next day, people would come out to protest the (resulting) chaos, hunger, hardship and pressure,” he added.
The Islamic republic has been struggling since late February to contain the country’s COVID-19 outbreak, which has killed over 12,400 people and infected more than 252,000.
Deaths from respiratory diseases reached 221 on Thursday, a single day record for Iran.
The country closed schools, cancelled public occasions and banned among its 31 provinces in March, however, Rohani’s government gradually lifted restrictions from April to reopen its economy through sanctions.
The growing number of victims of the epidemic has led the government to make the mask mandatory in closed public and allow the provinces most affected to re-impose restrictive measures.
Iran has suffered a sharp economic downturn after US President Donald Trump withdrew from a landmark nuclear agreement in 2018 and reimposed crippling sanctions.
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The International Monetary Fund predicts that Iran’s economy will shrink by 6% this year.
“It is not imaginable to celebrate the closure of business and long-term economic activities,” Rohani said, emphasizing that “people will not settle for this.”
Health Minister Said Namaki warned Wednesday of an imaginable “poverty revolt” and blamed U.S. sanctions for the government’s “empty chests.”
The reopening of the economy “was not due to our (the risks of the virus), but to the fact that we were on our knees opposed to an economy that it can no longer bear,” Namaki told state television.
U.S. sanctions They focused on oil sales and important banking relations, among other sectors, forcing Iran to rely on non-oil exports, which fell as borders closed to stop the spread of the virus.
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