This past week, Iranian regime’s President Hassan Rouhani admitted that in one of his regime’s prisons, 120 inmates were unwittingly exposed to the novel coronavirus via a newly introduced prisoner, leading to 100 of them testing positive for COVID-19. This revelation came several weeks after the mullahs’ judiciary began claiming that it was releasing prisoners on furlough and taking other measures to reduce the spread of the disease.
The disparity between these claims and the relevant outcomes is a clear sign of the Iranian regime’s ineptitude in managing this crisis. It is also very likely indicative of the deceptions that have predominated Tehran’s public discussion of the situation. Rouhani’s acknowledgement of mass infection was a rare example of candor, especially considering that he and other officials have spent the past three months largely denying that COVID-19 was a serious problem in Iran.
At least in state-run media, optimism is the general tone of public statements even now that the Health Ministry has announced that the death toll exceeds 7,000. The total number of confirmed cases is well over 100,000, and according to the regime, the country recorded a surge of 2,102 new cases last Thursday alone. This roughly coincided with the one-month anniversary of Iran regime’s first steps toward reopening its economy. And there is no sign of regime’s officials scaling back those efforts now that the consequences are becoming apparent.
But in fairness to the regime, one might argue that its optimism is somewhat justified when the official infection rates and death toll are compared to those that have been reported in the US and in parts of Europe. However, regime’s official figures, beside their emptiness, are objectively cause for concern when they involve a country of 83 million people with high levels of poverty and a poor track record on healthcare outcomes. Those conditions underscore the threat posed by Iran’s abandonment of social distancing measures, as well as the government’s refusal to provide meaningful aid to its people.
The People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) announced on Sunday that so far over 42,000 people have lost their lives due to the coronavirus outbreak.
The threat is made all the more apparent when one considers that regime’s optimistic narrative about the outbreak is, by all accounts, wildly out of step with reality. The official infection rate, though serious in its own right, does not appear to match the anecdotal evidence provided by many eyewitnesses to the situation in Iranian hospitals. Doctors and nurses have reported losing dozens of patients per day in individual hospitals. Morgue attendants have exposed the severe overcrowding of their facilities, while satellite imagery has revealed that tens of thousands of new graves are being excavated in cemeteries on the outskirts of major cities.
The Iranian regime has put considerable effort into suppressing these kinds of information. The head of the regime’s national police force recently announced that at least 320 people were facing prosecution for supposedly spreading “rumors” about the coronavirus outbreak. The population had been warned about this possibility much earlier, with the judiciary announcing in early March that the crime of contradicting state media on this topic would be punished with up to three years in prison, plus flogging.
That announcement came barely two weeks after Iranian regime’s officials first admitted that people were dying from Covid-19 in Iran. It also coincided with the news that a local official in the city of Qom had taken the rare step of countering state propaganda by reporting that 50 people had died in his locality before the regime would even acknowledge a dozen fatalities nationwide. The early threats and the early under-reporting both demonstrate that disinformation has been a top priority for the regime in dealing with this crisis. In fact, it now appears that regime’s authorities settled on that priority long before acknowledging that the pandemic had affected them.
In March, the National Council of Resistance of Iran released documents prepared by Iran’s National Emergency Organization which showed that the first instances of coronavirus infection were recorded no later than the last week of January, nearly a full month before a February 19 statement that claimed the country had just seen its first Covid-19 deaths. Even after issuing that statement, officials continued to brush off the pandemic as a conspiracy of “psychological warfare” by Tehran’s foreign enemies. And although the regime cannot realistically deny that the outbreak is a serious problem today, this effort to deflect blame has continued unabated.
Now, the strategy tends to focus less on blaming the US and its allies for undue panic as on blaming US sanctions for any and all problems that the regime has encountered in addressing the crisis. Rouhani continue to promote that message last week, after having previously bogusly claimed that Iran is full of empty ICU beds and is handling the pandemic more effectively than much of the West. He even went so far as to use these claims to justify the regime’s rejection of medical aid offers from the White House and Doctors Without Borders.
By simultaneously praising regime’s coronavirus response and blaming the West for the bad outcomes, regime’s officials are demonstrating the same kind of contradiction that is evident in their remarks on the prison situation. It simply makes no sense to say that Iran is taking measures to limit outbreaks within its criminal justice system, then turn right around and admit that 100 inmates were infected in a single incident.
These self-contradictory narratives cannot be taken seriously, and they only cast further doubt on everything that the Iranian regime says about the current national crisis, as well as any other topic that may be embarrassing to the leadership. Naturally, critics of that regime have already been extremely skeptical of its official statistics and other unsourced claims. But even some of those critics are surely unclear on the full extent of Tehran’s disinformation.
Fortunately, organizations like the NCRI have been on hand to trace the ravages of Covid-19 in Iran, and to derive alternate casualty estimates from hospital records, suppressed eyewitness testimony, and more. As it was mentioned before, the country’s leading coalition of democratic Resistance, particularly the MEK, now estimates that roughly 42,000 Iranians have lost their lives in a pandemic that has been largely ignored and covered up by government authorities.
These higher estimates stand alongside regime’s obvious disinformation as grounds for international intervention to help prevent further acceleration of the mortality rate in the wake of the regime’s full economic re-opening. If nothing else, allies of the United States should joint in a campaign of “maximum pressure,” through targeted sanctions and diplomatic isolation, to compel the regime to start being honest with people, and to adopt policies that prioritize the public welfare over the mullahs’ reputations.