Analysis by PMOI/MEK
Iran, August 16, 2020—In his remarks at Saturday’s Coroanvirus Task Force meeting, the Iranian regime president Hassan Rouhani once again blamed the people for spreading the coronavirus by not following health instructions.
“Some people thought this illness is serious, but it has a very short period,” but this illness “is not for just one or two months; it may be here for years,” said Rouhani while forgetting that back in late February he claimed that everything would return to normal by February 29.
He also tried to normalize the situation by saying: “When the entrance exam is discussed, again some people say whether it must be held or not? Well, how is it that we go to streets today? How is it that we run work offices, stores and malls? Holding university entrance exams is no different.”
Rouhani only makes the argument for the youth who want to go to universities. Meanwhile, he himself didn’t even risk going to the parliament earlier this week, even at the cost of not getting enough votes for his proposed Minister of Industry and Mines.
Comparing university entrance exams with people’s inevitable gatherings
Hereby Rouhani has agreed to hold university entrance exams with two million candidates at the cost of further spreading the virus and causing many more deaths.
Rouhani also left no doubt about holding Muharram ceremonies and yearly mourning gathering for Hossein ibn Ali, the grandson of Prophet Muhammad. “It’s the same for Muharram. The Ashura tradition must be kept alive while following health instructions,” he said.
This is while many medical experts and staff who are members of the Coronavirus Task Force committee have warned that following health instructions during Muharram mourning is impossible and that holding these events can cause hundreds of deaths.
“If the upcoming gatherings such as university entrance exams and Muharram mourning ceremonies is not controlled, we will have an increased outbreak of the disease in Autumn, which coincides with the outbreak of various types of influenza. We will definitely face a severe wave of new cases,” said the director of the Tajrish Shohada hospital of Tehran, while also mentioning that the hospitals’ capacities are full.
At the same time, the mullahs are criminally are insisting on holding Muharram mourning, which they use as an instrument to spread propaganda and fundamentalism.
The Friday prayer imam, Ahmad Alamolhoda, who is also the representative of regime’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in Mashad, threatened those who oppose holding the ceremonies and said, “Those who opposed holding mourning ceremonies will be tried in religious courts.”
The government’s complicity in the high Covid-19 death toll
Despite earlier warnings, regime Health Minister Saeed Namaki backed Rouhani and Khamenei’s insistence on holding Muharram mourning. In an open letter, he blamed the people by saying: “As [Khamenei] has said, we want to hold Muharram ceremonies. Let’s not allow the enemies blame the participants of these ceremonies for the possible outbreak of the disease.”
The criminal insistent of Rouhani, his government, and other ruling clerics to hold these ceremonies “more glorious than the previous years” is while Ali al-Sistani, the highest Shiite authority in Iraq, has reiterated that Muharram ceremonies must be held at homes and risking the lives of other Muslims is not permissible.
Therefore, the mullahs’ insistence on holding Muharram ceremonies and university entrance exams has no religious motives and is an intentional measure to send people to the coronavirus minefields and use the casualties resulting from it as an instrument to keep their hold on power.
The Iranian opposition People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) announced on Saturday, August 15, that over 89,000 people have died of the novel coronavirus in 383 cities checkered across all of Iran’s 31 provinces according to reports tallied by its internal network. This is while the official death count declared by the regime stands at 19,492 around a fifth of the actual figure.
Without a doubt, the regime’s criminal policy will backfire and cause more public outrage and add to the already explosive state of the society, which can trigger another wave of major protests in Iran.
