Analysis by PMOI/MEK
Iran, June 12, 2020—In recent days, numerous reports in the Iranian regime's state-run media indicated an astonishing spread of the coronavirus across the country.
Tasnim news agency, affiliated to the terrorist IRGC Quds Force reported: “The coronavirus department of Tohid Hospital in Sanandaj is full… definitely in upcoming days, the coronavirus crisis in Kurdistan Province, in particular in Sanandaj will get worse and irreversible, and we will fail miserably in this matter."
The Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences announced: “The number of hospitalized coronavirus affected patients is doubled compared to the previous month.” (Javan Daily, affiliated to the IRGC, June 10)
The Head of Iranian Nursing Organization said: “More than 7,000 nurses across the country have contracted coronavirus during the pandemic.”
The state-run website Ayen-e Jam quoted health officials as saying: “Between 10 to 15 percent of the people of Iran, which means twelve million, have contracted coronavirus.”
If we put this figure next to previous figures announced by regime officials such as Minou Mohrez, a member of the Coronavirus Task Force committee who announced that 20 percent of the population (16 million people) have contracted coronavirus, or Ehsan Mostafavi, one of the epidemiologists of the Health Ministry who announced 15 million have contracted COVID-19, or Kianoush Jahanpour, the dismissed spokesperson of the Health Ministry who announced 10 percent of the people have contracted the virus, we come to the conclusion that the disastrous spread of the novel coronavirus is an undeniable fact.
Abdolhosein Ghassemi, an epidemiologist who had announced that 12 million people have contracted coronavirus, said: “A look at the contradictions in the decision-making of dealing with coronavirus has reinforced the notion that we are now facing ‘herd immunity’ to overcome the crisis.”
While the Iranian regime President Hassan Rouhani and the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei are safe in their quarantined palaces, they follow the policy of “herd immunity” for the rest of the population, especially the poor. Rouhani had previously expressed his fear of the coronavirus pandemic creating the grounds for another nationwide uprising, saying that if 2-3 million people die from coronavirus, it would be better than 30 million hungry people taking to the streets. Khamenei very clearly said that production must resume, “whatever the price” and sent the people back to work and coronavirus minefields, intending to turn the coronavirus threat into an opportunity to maintain his regime.
The Iranian regime is deliberately infecting the people through propaganda, censorship, and reversing the reality of the coronavirus disaster.
Crime against humanity
Khamenei and Rouhani have chosen the security of their regime above people’s lives. Instead of imposing quarantines to prevent the spread of coronavirus, they have opted to reopen the economy, keeping the real statistics secret to justify their own falsified stats. This policy will lead to the death and suffering of millions of Iranians.
But will the coronavirus allow the regime to find a reprieve from certain collapse and overthrow at the hands of the Iranian people and their organized resistance movement?
What’s for sure is that the regime’s policy of ruling through death and terror is fast coming to an end, and this reality is manifesting itself through the regular protests of every segment of the Iranian society, thousands of people who are braving the regime’s repressive apparatus to have their voices heard in the streets of every city and town. At the same time, the activities of Iranian Resistance Units are keeping the flame of resistance and hope alive and preventing the regime from maintaining its rule of terror.
Meanwhile, the cracks are showing elsewhere in the regime’s worn-our armor. Rouhani announced on Wednesday, June 10, that the regime has lost $50 billion (8,700 trillion rials) of its income. This figure, according to Rouhani himself, is twice the budget of last year and 3,000 trillion rials more than the total budget of 2020.
Now the regime will have to choose to either cut back on spurious and anti-Iranian investments such as its nuclear project, ballistic missiles, and foreign terrorism, or to levy more taxes on a population that is already fed up with financial corruption of their leaders. In either case, it will have to bear more setbacks down the road.
