July 24, 2020
As in the United States, there is a clash in Iran between those who fear a strong lockdown will kill the economy and those who say a failure to lock down will kill vast numbers of citizens. President Rohani has argued repeatedly that Iran is too weak and cannot afford a lockdown to stop the virus. But he has not ignored the concerns of medical professionals the way President Trump has done.
Also, as in the United States, the epidemic has now shifted from the provinces that it first attacked with a vengeance and is now pummeling provinces that rode out the first months of the epidemic. The disease first struck Qom. But Qom is now one of only six of Iran’s 31 provinces to be labeled “white” or largely clear of the disease, as of July 14. The others are Gilan, Semnan, Qazvin, Markazi and Chahar Mahal va Bakhtiari. Most of those are provinces with small populations. All but Gilan are in the smallest half of the country’s provinces.
The numbers of deaths and new cases are now rising again after having settled down in April and the first half of May, according to the official published figures, which few believe. While the figures are widely seen as understated, they most likely do show when the epidemic is rising or falling in intensity. (See charts on page 12.)
Deaths topped 150 a few days in late March and early April, hitting a record of 158 on April 4, before falling as low as 34 on May 25. But the daily toll then rose again, hitting a record high 221 on July 9. The latest figures are just under 200 a day.
On an international scale, however, Iran does not look all that bad. In terms of deaths per million population, Iran on July 16 ranked 24th in the world, with 162 deaths for every million Iranians.
The worst six countries in the world are all European, ranging from Belgium with 845 deaths per million through Britain, Spain, Italy and Sweden to France with 461 deaths per million.
In 7th place is the United States with 424 deaths per million. Canada stands in 15th place with 234 deaths per million.
Of the others between the US and Iran, 10 are Latin American, four are European, and one is a neighbor of Iran, Armenia in 18th place.
These statistics are all self-reported, with different mechanisms in different countries for assembling the numbers. Iran is almost uniformly condemned for under-reporting its caseload and its deaths. But many others are also found lacking as well. Many, for example, count only coron-avirus deaths reported by hospitals, meaning that those dying at home are not recorded.
A few months ago, Iranian officials boasted that only 20 percent to 30 percent of all the beds reserved for coronavirus patients were in use. Now that the caseload has more than doubled, the briefers have stopped talking about the number of beds in use, which prompts speculation that some provinces are overwhelmed. In Bushehr, Deputy Health Minister Qassem Jan-Babai told a meeting that province was short of beds, ventilators and respirators for its coronavirus patients.
The government has long recommended that everyone wear a mask while away from home. It keeps threatening to make masks a legal requirement. But it just threatens; it hasn’t acted yet. It did, however, say that government offices wouldn’t provide services to anyone not wearing a mask and that passengers seeking to get on state-run buses and subway trains would not be allowed to board. But that did nothing about shoppers in grocery stores and other shops. Furthermore, Tehran’s mayor said that even with the order to wear masks on the Metro, only half the passengers do so.
Health Minister Saeed Namaki said July 7 that the volume of new cases and deaths was growing because the public had stopped taking safety measures. He said adherence to health recommendations had plummeted from 85 percent in April to just 20 percent in the first week of July, though no one explained how those numbers were calculated.
The lack of adherence to heath protocols prompted Supreme Leader Ali Khamenehi to speak out June 27, rebuking “some” people and officials who behave as if the pandemic “has been brought to an end.” Khamenehi himself has self-quarantined since March. He makes appearances via video links, but has not appeared in public since before Now Ruz.
After clamping down in March, the Islamic Republic began lifting restrictions April 11, the first country after China to begin removing limits on travel and gatherings. That was a response to those who feared for the economy. Health officials did not approve. Tehran completely reopened in June, with cinemas among the last institutions to re-open on June 20, albeit at half of seating capacity.
But in July, the government began re-imposing some restrictions, closing museums, cinemas, gyms, swimming pools and multiple other institutions, as well as banning weddings and funerals. Friday congregational prayers in the capital were canceled on March 13 and remained canceled at least through July 17. It is under review each week.
The Health Ministry announced June 30 that Iranian scientists have developed a potential coronavirus vaccine and would begin tests on humans “in the near future.” As of that day, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), there were 220 vaccine candidates under development and 26 had progressed to tests on humans.
Iran also says it is now producing a huge volume of masks, safety gear for doctors and nurses, ventilators for the severely ill, and other equipment needed in the medical war. On June 17, Sorena Sattari, the vice president for science, said, “Now, our country does not need imports of equipment to fight the coronavirus as all the country’s needs are met indigenously.”
But not all the claims made sense. While Iran said it was producing all the equipment it needed and so much more that it was now exporting coronavirus materials, it also accused the United States of killing Iranians by using sanctions to bar countries from selling medical gear to Iran.
As for schools, Education Minister Mohsen Hajj Mirzai announced June 22 that all schools would reopen September 5—two weeks earlier than usual—with half the students attending on even-numbered days and the other half on odd-numbered days in an effort to maintain social distancing. He said lessons broadcast on TV and educational videos provided to families would make up for the time students would not be in class.
Throughout the pandemic, opponents of the regime have accused it of lying about the number of people infected and killed by the virus. While it is clear that the regime hid the outbreak for some time, just as it hid for three days its role in the crash of the Ukrainian passenger jet shot down in January, the regime is now issuing huge numbers that make it clear to all that Iran is severely impacted.
As of July 16, the Islamic Republic was reporting the 11th largest number of cases of coronavirus in the world (267,061, but just 7 percent as many as in the United States), the 9th largest number of deaths (13,608 or 10 percent as many as in the US), but only the 24th largest number of deaths per million population.
To confront the spread of the disease, Iran has announced vast plans that have melted away within days. It has said it cannot do much because American sanctions hobble all their efforts, only to announce in the same hour that it is doing more than other countries.
It is very difficult to tell how much serious effort the regime is focusing on quashing the disease. It has refused to quarantine whole areas where the disease is raging, unlike most other countries. It boasts of a disinfectant campaign and publishes pictures showing firemen wasting disinfectant by spraying asphalt streets.
Like President Trump, President Rohani has played down the problem. On February 28, Rohani said the disease had passed its peak. The official death toll then totaled 34. On March 16, Rohani again said the disease had passed its peak. The death toll then was 853. The death toll was 14,405 on July 20.
The Iranian government recommended that citizens not take vacations over Now Ruz, the biggest vacation season of the year, and even stay at home and not visit relatives in the same city, as is the norm over the Now Ruz holidays, with multiple family get-togethers. But the regime refused to order a lockdown. Police reported that inter-city traffic declined at Now Ruz, but remained high. The government then ordered everyone to go home. But they had already dispersed all over the country—and undoubtedly helped disperse the coronavirus.
Iran’s reported numbers of cases was large. So, if the Islamic Republic is trying to hide the scale of the disease, it isn’t doing a very good job. Still, many in Iran believe the real numbers on how many people are infected are much higher than published. But that is true in many countries—including the United States, which started testing large numbers only in mid-March. Almost everywhere, the statistics are assumed running far behind the reality.
China, meanwhile, seems to have gotten control over the spread of the disease. On July 16, for example, Iran reported that it had uncovered 2,500 new cases in the previous 24 hours, while China reported only one new case.
In terms of total cases, Iran reported 23,049 on March 23. Radio Farda put the number that day at 51,880 based on media reports and announcements by local officials.
According to Dr. Rick Brennan, WHO’s director of emergency operations, the weakest link in Iran’s coronavirus fight is the data. He said the true number of infected persons could easily be five times greater than what was being reported by Iran. That doesn’t mean Iran is lying about the numbers, however; it could just be far behind in collecting data—as is the United States.
Little is known about what policies the government is following. Announcements are made and then reversed. Policies are proclaimed but not followed up. And little is said about many important issues.
On March 12, Khamenehi took the bold action of setting up a military command to take over the battle against coronavirus, a decision that was given huge coverage in the media.
On March 13, Maj. Gen. Mohammad Baqeri, the highest ranking officer in the Iranian military as chief of the Joint Staff, announced that on the next day troops would begin kicking people off the streets and ordering them to go home. On the next day, nothing happened. And nothing was ever again heard about the grand plan to clear the streets, imposing a quarantine. Baqeri has disappeared from the news conferences about fighting the disease.
Large numbers of prominent people have been revealed as self-quarantined for the disease. The Fars news agency published a list in mid-March of 24 prominent figures it said had been diagnosed with the disease, led by First Vice President Es’haq Jahangiri and Vice President Masoumeh Ebtekar, best known in the West as the spokesperson for the band of students that seized the US embassy in 1979.
But there is much mis-information, some of it clearly politically hostile. For example, the Tehran Times carried a report March 4 saying that Saudi Arabia was trying to hide news of the outbreak in Saudi Arabia and to heap blame on Iran. As proof, the Tehran Times said Saudi Arabia had “bought shares” in media outlets, including BBC Persian, which is entirely owned by the government of Great Britain and doesn’t sell shares.
Some members of the establishment—mainly in the military—have spent much of the time charging the United States with having released the coronavirus as a biological warfare attack on Iran and China. Much of the rhetoric has come from Brig. Gen. Gholam-Reza Jalali, head of the Civil Defense Organization and the source of much anti-American and anti-Israeli rhetoric.
He has said the coronavirus was “probably” developed by the American biological warfare program at Fort Detrick, Maryland. He has said there is much evidence pointing in this direction, none of which he cited, but has also said that more research must be done to be certain. “Evidence may prove the virus outbreak is a biological attack on the Iranian and Chinese economies,” he said March 3.
Iran got much foreign help. Back in February, Iran sent China masks when China was at the height of its epidemic. In March, China was sending Iran test kits and other medical gear. Published reports in Iran said Iran had received three flights filled with supplies from China, while Russia has sent 50,000 diagnostic kits. News reports in March said France, Britain, Germany, Austria, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Japan, UAE, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar (but not Bahrain or Saudi Arabia), the EU, and the World Health Organization (WHO) had all sent supplies.
The French charity Doctors Without Borders announced it was setting up a 50-bed hospital in Tehran. But the next day it was booted out of the country, with one official saying the doctors were probably spies.
Late in March, as the disease soared in Europe, foreign supplies were reduced. Germany banned exports of facemasks, for example, as it tried to meet its growing needs.
The Tehran magazine Bourse & Bazaar reported March 20 that the EU had just published a new rule restricting exports to other countries of all protective equipment—like facemasks, medical gowns and gloves—so that reduced supplies to Iran. But that was not the result of US sanctions.
On February 28, the Health Ministry’s public affairs office said the Defense Ministry was producing diagnostic kits that would be in the hands of health workers “next week.” They were not. Then, in mid-March, the government said domestically-made diagnostic kits would go on sale in the first month of the Persian year, around early April. They later appeared in large volume.
And for the first time since before the revolution, Iran has sought a loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to battle the disease. Iran asked for $5 billion. The US opposed the loan and the IMF has said only that it is studying the request. As of late July, the IMF had done nothing, although the World Bank said it was lending Iran $50 million to battle the coronavirus.
Although Iran has complained that US sanctions mean it cannot buy medical equipment, Central Bank Governor Abdol-nasser Hemmati changed his tune and said Iran has “non-sanctioned financial and banking channels in Europe and elsewhere,” thereby nullifying what he had been saying for many months about sanctions.
In Iran, the government has stumbled as it has reacted to the coronavirus threat. That really isn’t a great deal different from the reaction in other countries, including the United States—and not to mention China, which hid what it knew about the disease for about six weeks, giving the coronavirus a head start.
The Iranian government refused to isolate and quarantine the city of Qom, where the disease first appeared, unlike China, which locked down Wuhan, the global source of the ailment, and Italy, which locked down its northern provinces where the disease was concentrated. It appears that some in the clergy were a major reason that Qom was not isolated. But public comments indicate the clergy is deeply divided.
President Rohani has been very loudly opposed to city quarantines. He has said he is fearful that quarantining cities and closing businesses would be a disaster for the economy. But by Now Ruz, many said the disease had reached such a scale that it was as big a threat to the regime’s survival as a receding economy.
The government also refused local requests from officials in Gilan and Mazandaran provinces to block the roads into those provinces, which are favorite vacation spots on the Caspian coast. It seems worried Tehranis began flooding to the coast even before Now Ruz and the locals don’t want that. When the national government refused to block the roads, numbers of local residents reportedly blocked the roads themselves and forced people to return to Tehran until the police cleared the roadblocks.
The government, as in many countries that followed the urgings of WHO, has sought to reduce large gatherings that act as breeding grounds for corona-virus.
It ordered four major shrines shut down in Mashhad, Qom and Tehran. But the clergy balked loudly and the shrines remained open for several days. When they were finally closed, bands of religious zealots charged two of the shrines trying to get the authorities to re-open them. They did not. The closed shrines are those of Imam Reza in Mashhad, Masoumeh in Qom, Shah Abdol Azim south of Tehran and Jamkaran outside Qom.
One concern is the practice of the faithful to grasp onto and kiss the decorative fencing that surrounds the tombs at the shrines. One over-enthusiastic man posted a video on social media showing him licking the fencing at the Imam Reza Shrine in Mashhad to demonstrate his faith that God would protect him.
Many policies were announced and then changed in the face of criticism, suggesting to many that the government didn’t think through its policies before it announced them. Others said it just showed how the government was weak and indecisive when it came to anything other than enforcing its own security.
One problem in Iran (as in the United States) is that its Number One official has been very weak on enforcement of anti-coronavirus efforts. Only in mid-March did Supreme Leader Khamenehi and President Trump begin backing their health officials. It was only on March 16 that Khamenehi said that the policies laid down by the Health Ministry were “compulsory” for all Iranians. But the Health Ministry has largely made recommendations and refused to issue mandatory orders.
The government announced that all sports events would be canceled. Faced with an outcry, the government then announced that soccer matches could be played but in empty stadiums; fans could watch on television. Then the players balked and, in a third announcement, the government canceled all professional soccer matches starting March 4. Matches in empty stadiums resumed in late June.
At the Ministry of Tourism and Cultural Heritage, Minister Ali-Asghar Mounesan said in March that all museums and cultural sites under the ministry’s control were shutting down. But his deputy announced that major museums and cultural sites in Tehran would remain open for the Now Ruz holidays. Such conflicting announcements, which are not uncommon in Iran, lead one to question whether ministries coordinate policies or officials just issue pronouncements on whim.
The major visible first response by the government was the use of disinfectant in schools, on public transport, in mosques and elsewhere. It even sprayed disinfectant in the open air from trucks that drive slowly up and down streets, something few other countries did. While Iran says it was short of needed gear because of sanctions, it certainly was not short of disinfectant—although some critics questioned whether that was really what was being sprayed everywhere.
There is no need any longer to spray schools, as they were closed nationwide from the last two weeks before the Now Ruz holidays. This was one action that did not produce a loud counter-reaction.
While many generals blamed the virus on the United States, the Iranian outbreak originated in Qom where officials said the likely source was one of the many Chinese workers laboring on a number of construction projects in the province. But no one has said if the government checked the workers who have arrived since the Wuhan outbreak in December. If all the Chinese arrived in Qom before December, they could not have been the source of the disease in Iran. The workers who arrived since December should have been checked, but no Iranian official has said if they were or if any were found infected. China’s English-language Global Times quoted a Chinese official as saying all Chinese working in Iran were checked and none was infected.
The origin in Qom is not just a concern in Iran. A total of 16 countries have announced that the disease was brought inside their borders by a person who had just left Iran, many of them local Shiites who had flown to Qom on pilgrimage. Even a country as distant as New Zealand announced that its first coronavirus case was a person coming from Iran. The others are: Iraq; Afghanistan; Bahrain; Kuwait; Oman; Lebanon; UAE; Canada; Pakistan; Georgia; Estonia; Belarus; Azerbaijan; Qatar; and Armenia.
Word has circulated that alcoholic drinks will prevent or cure coronavirus. That has prompted many people to buy what Americans call hooch or home-distilled alcoholic drinks. Much of that is made with toxic alcohol unfit for human consumption. As of March 12, a medical official reported that 194 people had died from the effects of hooch.
The regime announced it was giving furloughs to half the country’s prisoners. The furloughs were to continue to April 19, but they have since been renewed indefinitely.
Business has been severely constrained by public fears, though the month before Now Ruz is normally the major shopping month of the calendar year. Merchants reported sales down drastically from last year.
It was only on March 22, when the country was largely shut down for Now Ruz, that the government of Tehran province ordered all retail shops closed in the capital. Only pharmacies and convenience stores were to remain open. No other province is known to have ordered such closures. And the closure lasted less than a month.
The armed forces have insisted on a major role in the battle against the coronavirus, as they do after any natural disaster. Initially, the Pasdaran said they would mobilize 300,000 troops to go door-to-door looking for people with coronavirus symptoms. When it was pointed out that was more likely to spread the disease, that plan, like so many others, just disappeared.