January 22, 2021
In a startling move, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenehi has forbidden the government from buying any coronavirus vaccines from either Britain or the United States, saying they can’t be “trusted.” Khamenehi said he was concerned that the Americans and British would use vaccine exports to Iran to test their vaccines to the possible harm of the Iranian people. But the testing of the US and UK vaccines had already ended long before Khamenehi spoke. Khamenehi asked, “If their Pfizer company can produce vaccines, why don’t they use the vaccine on themselves so that they don’t have so many dead?” But by the time Khamenehi spoke, the vaccines had been injected into the arms of millions of Americans, Britons and others, so Khamenehi’s assertion made no sense whatsoever. The edict angered many, who charged that Khamenehi was allowing ideology to override good sense at the expense of the health of the Iranian people. Ali Vaez, director of the Iran project at the International Crisis Group, said the ban “is the triumph of ideology over common sense. It’s not just a reckless politicization of the Iranian people’s well-being, but an illadvised political move.”
One of the ironies of Khamenehi’s ban on the Pfizer vaccine is that a senior figure in its development is Ugur Shahin, a German doctor of Turkish descent. In 2019, Shahin was the recipient of the Mustafa prize in Iran, a biennial Iranian prize for Muslims in science and technology. Some wags have posted a photo showing Shahin seated next to Dr. Alireza Marandi, who is Khamenehi’s personal physician. (Marandi has been vocally supporting Khamenehi’s ban.) Many Iranians on social media noted that in 2019, when gasoline prices were tripled, Khamenehi deflected responsi bility, saying he was “not an expert” and that a high-level economic council was responsible for the decision. But today Khamenehi is overriding the preferences of many of Iran’s leading medical experts. Within days of the Supreme Leader’s ban, Dr. MohammadReza Zafarghandi, president of Iran’s Medical Association, begged leaders not to politicize the issue. Without naming a specific product but clearly referring to those made by Pfizer and Moderna, Dr. Zafarghandi said certain vaccines already had an effectiveness of 95 percent hich he called a “valuable scientific achievement.” That follows an open letter from members of the Medical Council to President Rohani urging him to ensure that vaccines are procured immediately and not politicized, which warned that Iranian lives were at risk. International bodies have also reacted to Khamenehi’s decision. Michael Ryan, executive director of the World Health Organization’s Health Emergencies Program, had the same message for the Supreme Leader: “This organization has emphasized many times that corona-virus must not be politicized.” Amnesty International also had some harsh words for the Supreme Leader. “The decision by the leader of the Islamic Republic to ban millions of Iranians from the vital American and British coronavirus vaccines is ignoring the right to life and the right to health,” the organization tweeted. “The Supreme Leader is playing with the lives of millions. [Iranian] officials must put an end to this shameless defiance of human rights obligations.” Meanwhile, Dr. Mohammad Reza Salehi, who is overseeing clinical trials of the Iranian “CovIran-Barakat” vaccine, announced that results from animal testing indicated this product would be between 80 and 90 percent effective. He claimed that the Iranian vaccine would be “one of the safest” in the world, with the “least amount of complications” because it followed the traditional model of injecting patients with an “inactive” form of the virus rather than using innovative RNA technology, as others do, like Pfizer and Moderna. However, the American vaccines (from Pfizer and Moderna) and the “British” vaccine (actually Swedish-made by AstraZeneca with much of the research done in Britain) are more expensive than others, so Iran was unlikely to rely on them. There was speculation that Khamenehi banned the expensive vaccines ideologically to avoid saying the regime didn’t want to spend so much money protecting the Iranian public. Pfizer’s vaccine must be supercooled and stored at minus94 degrees Fahrenheit (minus70 centigrade). Medical professionals have been quoted as saying Iran does not have the required equipment for supercooling. News reports said some unnamed Iranian-Americans were prepared to pay for 150,000 Pfizer doses to be contributed to Iran. Khamenehi’s ban stops that, but the numbers aren’t much considering that, at two doses per person, the 150,000 doses would vaccinate only 75,000 of Iran’s 83 million people—and Iran would have to pay for super-cooling equipment. Iran has said it will be buying vaccines from India, China or Russia, plus using a vaccine developed in Cuba and being tested in Iran. By next summer, the Islamic Republic says it will be making one or more vaccines developed in Iran. The first imported vaccine should arrive in Iran before Now Ruz, the Medical Council said—part of 16 million doses ordered from COVAX, an agency set up by the WHO. Meanwhile, Iranian media are carrying horror stories almost daily about Western vaccines, alleging large numbers of deaths and nasty reactions to the vaccines. Indeed, in Norway 23 elderly people who recently had a vaccine shot have died, but Norway has not yet determined if the deaths were related to the vaccine. And many people do have unpleasant reactions to the vaccine, mainly temporary fevers, nausea and swelling around the site of the injection—true of many vaccines for other ailments. But the frequency of news stories in Iran about the horrors of the Western vaccines appear to be the result of orders from Iran’s censors. In addition, hardliners are making speeches about the Western vaccines causing cancer or infertility—even turning Iranians into robots. One Pasdar officer said the foreign pharmaceutical firms making the vaccines are seeking to reduce the world’s population by 20 percent. A few days before the end of the Trump Administration, the US sanctioned the Organization for Executing Imam Khomeini’s Order, a huge holding company owning a multitude of Iranian companies. The regime condemned Trump, saying it was sanctioning the business that is developing one of Iran’s vaccines to harm the Iranian people. And, indeed, one of the firms owned by the organization is the Barakat Industrial Pharmaceutical Complex, which has created Iran’s first vaccine, which is now undergoing tests. But the sanctions only freeze any assets the parent organization has in the United States, which is likely to be zero. In Iran, some critics accused Khamenehi of banning the American vaccines so the Barakat firm could make him more profits. Before the Khamenehi ban, the Iranian media had been filled for weeks with assertions that the Americans were using sanctions to prevent Iran from buying vaccines. Iran said the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) had blocked an Iranian payment to the World Health Organization for the vaccines it is distributing. OFAC, which hardly ever issues a press release, was silent. Finally, The Washington Post asked OFAC December 7 if it was blocking the payments and OFAC said it had already issued a license to speed up Iran’s payment to WHO. The same day, Central Bank Governor Abdol-nasser Hemmati said OFAC had refused to issue a license. About a week later, the government said it had made the payment to WHO for its first imports of vaccines.
