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COVID-19 may simply not have arrived in Iran at a worse time. A few weeks after the confirmation of its first case, the infections exploded, making the country the epicenter of the global coronavirus epidemic at a time when its economy was already reeling from U.S. sanctions.
The first official cases of the new coronavirus in Iran were announced on February 19: two deaths in the holy city of Qom. The alarm bells have sounded immediately.
The cases were discovered as deaths and not as active infections, meaning that the virus had spread unchecked through these other people before they became seriously ill and died. In addition, the virus had a gateway to spread around the world, as Qom is a center for foreign devout tourism. Instead of reacting quickly, government officials simply begged Iranians not to stop in the city. State news organizations have called on Iranians to surrender and vote in the election. And in two weeks, Iran had reported the highest number of deaths from the virus outside China.
By early May, the government had controlled the virus, but at the expense of national GDP, which fell by 15%. President Hassan Rohani has reopened the economy. The resolution would mark the beginning of Iran’s wave of infections in June, bringing the number of new cases to more than 3,000, according to the official IRNA news agency. As of August 27, Iran had shown a total of 367,000 cases of coronavirus and more than 21,000 deaths. The virus has spread from Iran to neighboring countries, adding Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates and other Gulf states, as well as distant countries such as the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States.
Why was Iran’s initial epidemic so devastating in scale, severity, and spread? Our research shows six main things, national and international, that have exacerbated the epidemic in Iran. The first thing is a heinous government leadership. The Iranian government has been harshly criticized for politicizing its reaction to coronavirus and failing to give decision-making force to fitness experts and fitness workers.
Days after the virus was shown to have arrived in Iran, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei called the virus reports “negative propaganda” from foreign media, rather than addressing the threat of fitness. As the virus spread from Qom, The Deputy Minister of Health, Iraj Harirchi, ruled out quarantine as a “Stone Age” measure, the day before it tested positive for coronavirus. Later, on March 11, Iran’s fitness minister was replaced through Rohani as president of the national racing organization COVID-19, symbolizing the government’s politicization of its reaction to coronavirus.
The moment exacerbated the outbreak in Iran was the inconsistent notification of the spread of the virus. At the start of the epidemic in Iran, fitness staff and hounds reported that the government had suppressed data on the coronavirus. On 3 March, a nurse at Alborz Hospital in Karaj said: “We have been told not to report the number of victims, and only the Ministry of Health tells us.” This story consists of many individual and anonymous reports, and is in addition to that provided to the Committee for the Protection of Journalists through a journalist based in Iran on March 17.
“Rohani’s justice and management have told Iranian bloodhounds operating inside the country not to control the number of deaths caused by coronavirus,” the reporter said. Indeed, Iran’s propensity for censorship has undermined the transparency needed to temporarily curb the coronavirus. A World Health Organization (WHO) technical project to Iran has heard another, more innocent problem: “The weakest link in its chain is data,” said Rick Brennan, the region’s emergency director. Iran, like many other countries at the start of the epidemic, needed to check on more people in order to report more powerful figures.
Third, Iran’s parliamentary elections on 21 February were due to take position a few days after the country showed its first case of coronavirus, and officials continued to inspire Iranians to vote. Public confidence in the regime declined in January after Iran mistakenly shot down a Ukrainian passenger plane near Tehran, killing the 176 passengers, and then attempted to hide its role in the incident. Given the government’s direct interest in expanding participation despite public mistrust, it appears to have minimized the risk posed by coronavirus.
During the pandemic, state media such as Tasnim connected with Iranian extremists, messages about coronavirus as a biological weapon, or American propaganda.
Fourth, the media landscape in Iran is largely limited to the publication of the official government narrative, as most media are administered by the state or heavily censored. The role of a lax, independent press in a pandemic is vitally important: it helps keep others informed, holds governments accountable, and circulates evidence-based strategies to prevent infection.
During the pandemic, state media such as Tasnim, connected with Iranian extremists, posted messages about the coronavirus as a biological weapon or American propaganda to deter the electorate from parliamentary elections. At the same time, independent reports through Iranian journalists and social media users on coronavirus have led to arrests or censorship, according to Reporters Without Borders.
Many Iranians seem to get data from foreign media or social media when they access them. The danger of relying too much on women, of course, is that social media can be a vehicle for misguided data. For example, a prominent Ayatollah, Abbas Tabrizian, publishes home remedies for COVID-19 on a popular messaging platform called Telegram. He advises readers to “eat large amounts of apples and onions” and “soak cotton in violet oil before bedtime and insert it into the anus.” Sales of drugs of choice have increased, while must-have drugs, which are difficult to import due to U.S. sanctions, remain infrequent and costly.
Fifth, U.S. sanctions opposing Iran led the country to an even deeper economic crisis, and new sanctions that the pandemic forced Iran to decide between economic preservation and public health. Solvency was a precedent when the Iranian government-affiliated airline continued to fly to and from China, Iran’s largest oil visitor and therefore an economic lifeline; when Rohani’s leadership lifted economic blockades, stimulating Iran’s moment wave; and when Tehran was reluctant to prevent cross-border trade.
In 2019, the International Monetary Fund reported that Iran’s economy contracted by 9.5% (compared to 4.8% in 2018). This year, however, the country’s economy was expected to stabilize without any setback. Indeed, Iran had diversified its oil exports (criticized by U.S. sanctions) into manufactured goods, which it sent throughout the Middle East and to China, Russia, and Europe. Given Iran’s disproportionate dependence on exports and a lack of economic confidence amid U.S. sanctions, the regime was naturally reluctant to stop the industry across its borders and could offend China.
Finally, U.S. sanctions also block Iran’s access to the foreign monetary system. In October 2019, Human Rights Watch published a report detailing the disproportionate effect of sanctions on receiving humanitarian aid in Iran, i.e. fitness products and essential medicines. Although the U.S. government incorporates exemptions from its sanctions regime, corporations and banks are too compliant because they are broad, complex, and backed by Washington’s hostile anti-Iranian rhetoric.
By maintaining its sanctions regime, the Trump administration has denied Iran access to critical medical resources when it needed it most. From the floor upwards, WHO Regional Director of Emergency Services Brennan said he visited new fitness centres in March where everything had been manufactured: sheets, oxygen masks, non-public protective appliances, Array Brennan warned that the device produced would possibly be of inferior quality and put medical personnel at risk of infection. The Trump administration’s continued use of economic sanctions is extraordinarily damaging as it unnecessarily prioritizes its own political calendar over the lives of Iranians.
Iran’s reaction to the first wave of coronavirus in early 2020 illustrates the extent to which the politicization of physical care, both nationally and internationally, unnecessarily puts human lives at risk. Moreover, Iran’s wave of infection reflects the first of five of the six causes: it was driven by poor government leadership that prioritized reopening, aggravated by the planned suppression of the number of deaths through COVID-19, aggravated by Tehran’s media disinformation campaigns, and was made imaginable through new U.S. sanctions on the Iranian economy and access to the foreign monetary system.
In the face of the ongoing coronavirus crisis, the Iranian government may continue to blame the United States for its sanctions regime. Similarly, the United States may continue to blame the Iranian government for poor leadership. But that would be to allow the politics of either country to divert attention from the genuine record: the lives of the Iranians.
Yasmin Rafiei is a PhD candidate at Stanford University and an assistant at the University of Edinburgh. Twitter: @YasminRafiei
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