Analysis by PMOI/MEK
Iran, April 21, 2020—With every passing day, it becomes clearer that the responsibility of the Iranian regime’s so-called Coronavirus Control Task Force is only to permute and reverse truths to justify the regime’s criminal handling of the COVID-19 crisis and the government’s decision to send people back to work while the spread of the virus has not been contained.
In the April 19 session of the Task Force, the Iranian regime president Hassan Rouhani spoke about his “smart distancing plan.” As usual, by referring to the fake statistics of the Health Ministry, Rouhani claimed that after the execution of the Smart Distancing Plan the spread of the COVID-19 disease has reduced in some provinces and has stabilized in others.
By justifying the end of quarantines in Iran he claimed that there has been no spike in cases and that critical patients and deaths have decreased. This is while regime officials, some of whom are members of the Coronavirus Control Task Force, provide a completely contrasting image. Among them is Alireza Zali, the head of the Coronavirus Task Force in Tehran, who warned about a 7-percent increase of coronavirus patients in the special treatment departments of Tehran’s hospitals and said, “Despite all recommendations, we are worried about the registration of 91 new cases in the special care departments of Tehran’s hospitals in one day alone. At present, patients in critical conditions refer to hospitals.”
Rouhani’s remarks are not only contrary to what other officials say, but they also contradict his own claims. On one hand, he asserts the situation has normalized and considers reopening businesses by observing health protocols, but on the other hand, he recommends people to stay home.
Rouhani confessed “We have a problem, if we recommend people to take the subway or bus for commute within the city, it creates health problems… if we tell people to use their cars it creates traffic, and we choose the second option.” But in reality, the reason the regime chose this option is nothing but to sell gasoline as a band-aid measure for its broken economy.
These contradictory remarks, plus the fake statistics of the Health Ministry, is only for advancing the criminal policies of the supreme leader Ali Khamenei, which Rouhani carries out. Khamenei said that production must resume “at any cost” and uses the crisis as a tool against the collapse of his regime at the price of many human lives. It is very ironic since it is none other than the regime itself that has destroyed the Iranian economy by looting and stealing the Iranian people’s wealth.
Choosing between life and security
The regime had two options in facing the coronavirus crisis. Some state-run outlets called it the “choice between bread and life,” which stands for the conflict between running the economy and protecting the people against the coronavirus. But other state-run newspapers described it as the “choice between life and security,” meaning that the regime has to choose between protecting the people against coronavirus and its own survival. Undoubtedly, Khamenei has chosen the second option since he didn’t implement a quarantine policy like other countries. The costs of feeding the population while the economy stagnated due to the lockdown were more than he was willing to pay, and since his regime’s survival is his main and sole goal, the human cost of reopening the economy and sending people back to work amid the threat of coronavirus was something he decided he could live with. Therefore, he ordered the cancelation of quarantine and Rouhani’s despicable lies are entirely in the service of vindicating this criminal decision.
The regime’s failure in hiding the truth
But no matter how much the regime tries to cover up the facts, because of the huge distance between Rouhani’s claims and the ground truth and scale of the disaster, many officials inevitably mention a part of the reality. These officials are extremely worried about the regime’s future and their own fate and know that slaughtering thousands and millions (as many experts have predicted) certainly won’t go unanswered.
The regime has established its IRGC and Basij forces in hospitals and cemeteries to prevent people from taking photos and videos to post on social media. The regime didn’t even publish the names of its own officials who died due to coronavirus.
But the most important is the regime’s widespread concerns over tireless revelations made by Iranian opposition People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) regarding the coronavirus death toll.
In this regard, Mohsen Hashemi, son of former regime president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Chairman of the Tehran City Council, said, “The number of Corona victims in the country is much higher than the official number.”
The Iranian Resistance has confronted the evil regime ruling in Iran who tries to use the coronavirus disaster as an opportunity for its own survival.
Commentating on the regime’s daily lowering of the fatalities, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), said: In recent days, the regime’s Health Ministry officials are clumsily mimicking the European countries, where the death toll has actually decreased, and are announcing figures dictated by the mullahs’ supreme leader Ali Khamenei. But one cannot deceive the public by engineering the figures, just as the Iranian people did not believe Hassan Rouhani’s claim that he had been unaware of the spread of Coronavirus to Iran until February 19, 2020.
