In Iran today, it is meaningless to use words such as “a new Covid-19 wave” or “peak”. Even within the regime, they now use words to describe the Coronavirus Outbreak situation in Iran that were previously used by the Iranian resistance to expose the tragedy.
Still, regime leading officials, including the outgoing president Hassan Rouhani blatantly say that they want to “shut down the country with a lot of fear in the society!” (March 2021). Now they are talking about “the highest level of crisis,” “unprecedented killing,” and “mass deaths” (according to Mohammadreza Mahboobfar, quoted by the state-run Arman daily on August 8, 2021) and that “the Covid-19 mortality rate is rising” (Mohsen Mardani- member of the regime’s Combatting Covid-19 Task Force-August 2021).
Alireza Zali, head of the Combatting Covid-19 Task Force in Tehran, declares all cities in the province red; Hospitals announce one by one that they do not have empty beds and that the bed becomes empty only if a patient dies. Videos published on social media of the Imam Reza Hospital in Mashhad show patients lying on blankets in the hospital corridors and under trees. In Babol, people must inject iv-fluids inside cars, even if they could find any.
A video on social media showed a grieving mother in Sistan and Baluchestan who had recently lost his young son saying: “My boy died. I watched him suffer because there was no oxygen. I went to every room in the hospital and asked for oxygen. No one answered me.”
A nurse in Iran published a video inside the hospital where a large number of male and female patients are lying on blankets in the corridors and stairs of the hospital, and doctors and nurses do not know how to treat so many patients. According to another video by an Iranian citizen from of Behesht Zahra cemetery, “Behesht Zahra is full of dead bodies. All our compatriots are dying. It is a disaster”.
This is the situation and reality in Iran. Meanwhile, other nations have been able to control the coronavirus outbreak in its delta variant, through general vaccination.
Thus, the situation of “mass deaths” in Iran has no cause other than the regime’s deliberate inaction and explicitly prohibiting credible vaccines to quell the restive society.
Yet, Ali Khamenei and his regime have failed to control Iran’s explosive society by taking such an inhumane coronavirus policy. The recent protests in Khuzestan are testaments to the regime’s failure.
Now Khamenei is trying to prevent the uprising by spreading the Delta variant and depriving people of medicine and vaccines. The regime’s inhumane COVID-19 policy would only increase the hatred toward the mullahs, the flames of which increasingly engulfed the regime.
