The People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) announced on Tuesday that the coronavirus death toll in Iran has surpassed 41,000. The disease continues to rapidly across Iran and claim more lives due to the regime’s criminal decision to send people back to work.
Since the coronavirus outbreak, the Iranian regime has initiated a campaign of cover-up and deception. They have put the death toll at less than 7,000, contradicting the situation on the ground.
Along with its cover-up, the mullahs’ regime has ever since tried to downplay the extent of this crisis. The regime’s officials refused to quarantine the city of Qom, where the virus was first detected, and subsequently, they refused to issue a national quarantining order. After they reluctantly did, the mullahs refused to financially back the Iranian people, who even before the coronavirus outbreak were experiencing economic hardships due to the regime’s institutionalized corruption and wrong economic policies. This so-called quarantining quickly resulted in more people joining the army of hungries across Iran. Fearing a possible social outrage, the regime’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei and the mullahs’ president Hassan Rouhani quickly ordered people back to work amid the coronavirus outbreak. Many of the regime’s officials warned of the inevitable rising death toll following this decision, but Rouhani and Khamenei prioritized the regime’s security over people’s lives and insisted on reopening economic activities. Rouhani’s remarks in this regard elucidates the situation: “The coronavirus is a disease, yet unemployment is a great danger. The coronavirus death should not be contained while there will be deaths due to poverty and unemployment.”
Now, the regime’s officials and state-run media are simultaneously speaking of the death toll increasing rapidly, particularly in Khuzestan and Lorestan provinces and Tehran and warn about a possible social uprising.
The state-run ISNA news agency reported on Tuesday: “According to the Epidemiology Committee of the Health Ministry, the upward trend or the beginning of the peak is observed in eight provinces, including Lorestan, Mazandaran, Khuzestan, Kerman, Central, Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad, Ilam, and Hamedan.”
The state-run news agency Mehr quoting Kerman’s vice chairman of the University of Medical Sciences today reported a “significant increase in the number of Coronavirus infections in the province in recent days.”
On Monday, Massoud Mardani, a member of National Coronavirus Combat Taskforce (NCCT), told the state-run daily, Donya-e-Eqtesad: “The virus has spread exponentially in Tehran, Gilan, Semnan, and Khuzestan provinces in recent days … Sadly, the second wave of the outbreak in Khuzestan has been much worse than expected, and the same situation may follow for other provinces.”
Khuzestan Governor Gholamreza Shariati, in an interview with the state-run Entekhab daily, said: “The number of the coronavirus patients in Khuzestan has increased by 200% in the last month … and the number of hospitalized patients has increased by 60%.”
On Saturday, the regime’s Health Ministry spokesman Kianoush Jahanpour wrote on twitter: “In the past 24 hours, Tehran and Khuzestan have accounted for nearly half of all hospital referrals for COVID-19. Khuzestan is on the verge of explosion.”
In this regard, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), had earlier said: “The astounding rise in the coronavirus death toll and the upward trend of the crisis in many provinces, like Khuzestan, Lorestan, Central, and Hormozgan, are entirely due to the clerical regime’s inhuman policies.” She added: “The only thing the mullahs are concerned about is to preserve their disgraceful rule. The Iranian people’s wealth has been squandered in the unpatriotic nuclear and missile projects, as well as in the export of terrorism and warmongering. In the first few months of the crisis, no serious assistance was provided to those infected, the deprived, and the destitute out of hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of public wealth under the control of Khamenei and the IRGC.”
The regime’s deadlock in handling the coronavirus outbreak has increased the possibility of social turmoil and has frightened the regime’s officials.
Ahmad Naderi, one of the regime’s officials, told the state-run Resalat daily on March 7: “I am worried about the social and security outcome of this crisis. Soon, rebellions, much larger than the ones in 2018 and 2019 and certainly much larger than the ones in the 1990s, will happen.”
