These days, the whole world is embroiled in an emerging phenomenon called the Corona virus. We are living in an unprecedented time and almost all countries are looking for solutions to this emergency. Unfortunately, my country, Iran, is one of the countries that was greatly affected by this global shock. The World Health Organization recognized Iran as a high-risk country (Duddu, 2020). In the meantime, a lot of contradictory news and misinformation was published, with many experts looking for the answer to why this epidemic spread so rapidly in Iran. That was the main question. After that, attention was focused on the extent to which the Iranian government is responsible for this expansion.
Did the government's mismanagement cause the virus to go out of control? Was the death toll given out by the Iranian regime true? Are the people to blame because they do not take the restrictions seriously? These questions have occupied the minds of many domestic and foreign researchers.
The Iranian regime is known as a dictatorial government throughout the world, and it has not always been transparent in various cases with the western world and the international community. Many experts and even the international community believe that the government has been slow to act and has delayed the announcement of the Corona outbreak in Iran, also hiding the death toll (Duddu, 2020). According to Phillips & Robinson (2020),"Iran's totalitarian rulers are pervasive about the scope and consequences of the disease, preferring to save face rather than save their lives"(P.2). A growing number of analysts and physicians have questioned Tehran’s death toll tallies and they believe that Iran’s leaders would often conceal outbreaks of corona from the Iranian people and the international community to protect their personal political and economic interests (Afkhami, 2020). US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says, Iranian officials have covered up the facts about the coronavirus. He told reporters at a news conference in Washington that he had information that the regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran had "important details" about the outbreak of the coronavirus, but declined to comment. Expressing concern over the issue, he called on Iranian officials to tell the truth about the virus (Macias, 2020). With a brief look at the progress of the Coronavirus prevalence in Iran, we can get a little closer to the truth.
The outbreak started in Qom, the stronghold of Iran’s Shiite clergy, southwest of the capital, Tehran. Qom draws Chinese students to its seminaries for religious studies, giving this city the largest Chinese population in Iran. Religious shrines in Qom remained open, as authorities initially balked at closing the shrines to the public, which would have reduced the income earned from millions of pilgrims each year. Crowds throng there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to touch and kiss it. Other countries, by comparison, closed or thoroughly cleaned churches, mosques and holy sites (Kangarlou & Hincks, 2020). In any event, as COVID-19 cases began to multiply in Qom, the Iranian regime failed to enact serious measures to contain the outbreak.
As Duddu (2020) says, the symptoms of the virus can last 2 weeks before anyone realizes them, so by February 21, the virus has to be already spread out. However, the regime didn’t announce it to not harm the show up of the population to the elections. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, accused the country’s enemies of exaggerating the threat posed by the coronavirus shortly before the elections to discourage the turnout of voters, which he knew would be low due to the lack of popular support for the regime (Afkhami, 2020). By Feb. 24, the virus had spread to most of the 31 provinces in Iran. President Rouhani publicly refused to institute nationwide quarantines, calling them “anarchic” and boasted of Iran’s public health system (Phillips & Robinson, 2020). In line with the stupid and inhumane policies of the Iranian regime, Iran's supreme leader refused American assistance to fight the coronavirus citing a conspiracy theory claiming it could be man-made by the United States government and we do not need their help. Conversely, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo denounced Ayatollah Khamenei's remarks, saying his "lies" were endangering people's lives (Macias, 2020).
Along with all the negligence, the government has stopped short of ordering major travel restrictions, even for Nowruz (Persian New Year’s) when millions are on the move. It hasn’t explained why, but there could be worry about further angering its people or slowing down its sanctions-hurt economy. I agree with Kangarlou & Hincks (2020) who discuss that, the angry Iranian society, which has been wounded by the dictatorship that has ruled Iran for many years, has been more and more affected by the Iranian regime's inhumane policies during the Corona global crisis, and many lives have been lost. The Iranian people have deep mistrust of the government and blame it on the Corona crisis in the country. Iran witnessed unrest across the country in November and the government's bloody crackdown on perpetrators. As a result, unlike democratic countries where people have the support of the government in times of crisis, such as during the Coronavirus attack, people in a dictatorial government like the Iranian regime have no confidence in the government. They believe that the news and information about Corona is a lie from the regime and that the decisions will not be in their favor (Phillips & Robinson, 2020). Therefore, public protests against the Iranian regime's policies are expected to begin soon.
In conclusion, we are in a critical situation that the whole world has been facing for months and is still involved. Meanwhile, different policies have been pursued by countries to deal with this crisis. Democratic countries, for which human lives are valuable, quickly took precautionary measures to prevent progress as much as possible. In the meantime, the Iranian regime, which has proven to be a dictatorial government in the world, took the lives of the innocent people of Iran in the interests of its own government. Iranian officials have been slow to respond to the virus. If the government took the first steps from the first patient, the numbers in the chart would not be added. Figures show that no deliberate action was taken until it was out of control. Unfortunately, the people of my country have been threatened by the tough policies of a clerical dictatorship that has jeopardized the value of maintaining power, protecting its image, and protecting its economic, political, and ideological interests in public health. . The Iranian people pay a heavy price for the mismanagement of the government and the preference of the Iranian regime for the priorities of maintaining its government. I hope that one day the people of Iran will enjoy the services of a democratic government and will not fall victim to it.
References
Afkhami, A. (2020). Why Iran Is Such a Coronavirus Threat. Washington and the World.
Retrieved March 3, from https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/03/03/iran-used-to-be-better-at-handling-epidemics-then-came-coronavirus-119651
Duddu, P. (2020). COVID-19 in Iran: Coronavirus outbreak, measures and impact.
Pharmaceutical-technology. Retrieved April 9, from www.pharmaceutical-technology.com/features/iran-coronavirus-covid-19-death-toll-cases-ncov-measures-
Kangarlou, T. & Hincks, J. (2020). 'People Are Dying Left and Right.' Inside
Iran's Struggle to Contain Its Coronavirus Outbreak. Time. Retrieved March17,
Macias, A. (2020). Pompeo calls Iranian regime ‘an accomplice’ amid deepening coronavirus
Outbreak. cnbc. Retrieved Feb 5, 2020, from www.cnbc.com/2020/03/17/coronavirus-pompeo-calls-Iranian-regime-an-accomplice-amid-crisis.html
Phillips, J. & Robinson, N. (2020). Iranian Regime’s Reckless Disregard Made the Coronavirus
Outbreak Worse. The Daily Signal. Retrieved March 20, from www.dailysignal.com/2020/03/20/iranian-regimes-reckless-disregard-made-the-coronavirus-outbreak-worse/
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