Iran regime still trying to deny coronavirus crisis
Iranian MP Ahmad Amir Abadi Farahani revealed on Monday that 50 people in Qom, where coronavirus was first detected in Iran, have died from the virus in the past two weeks.
Of course, given that the Iranian regime has been attempting to downplay the virus in a foolish attempt to make the regime seem stronger on the world stage, officials rushed out to deny this.
Ali Rabiei, spokesperson for the government of Hassan Rouhani, and deputy health minister Iraj Harirchi held a joint press conference that day to downplay the crisis.
Harirchi said: “I deny the claim. According to the directives of the government and the [Supreme National] Security Council, no one else is qualified to declare news like this. We have the information… If the number of deaths in Qom is half or even a quarter of this figure, I will resign.”
He then said that anyone who has information on the spread of the coronavirus should contact the regime privately, which is a good way to ensure that it remains buried.
Harirchi attempted to justify the high death rate in Iran from coronavirus, which he attributed to other countries having a policy of “concealment and denial”, rather than Iran’s continuation of flights to and from China and his claims that “people do not need face masks”.
Rabiei added: “As the spokesperson of the government, I can tell you that many countries don’t have the transparency that we have. We acted in a very transparent way in this regard.”
It is especially rich hearing them claim that other countries are hiding the effects of the coronavirus when the regime’s officials admitted to not making statements about the virus in order to increase participation in last week’s elections, which were due to be boycotted by the people anyway as a form of protest.
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said: “A collective campaign was undertaken against people’s participation in the election. On social media, a variety of entities used every factor possible… Since a month, two months ago, they said this was not an election, not a real election, the Guardian Council has done this or that… And this latest illness (COVID-19) became an excuse. In other words, they did not miss the slightest opportunity and did not even waste a few hours.”
Another reason for the regime’s denial of the crisis is that they feared another nationwide uprising, like those in November and January.
Maryam Rajavi, the President of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), said: “The intervention of the World Health Organization (WHO) and its dispatch of supervisory and emergency medical teams to Iran are both urgent and necessary.”
