by Mina Khani, translated by Kian Zeytani. First published at German newspaper Analyse&Kritik on April 21st, 2020.
The Corona outbreak reached “Iranian soil” much earlier than the government in Iran admits. As alte as February 18th, right after the 41st anniversary of the revolution (February 11th) and shortly before the parliamentary elections (February 21st), the Iranian state confirmed via the Revolutionary Guards newspaper that Covid-19 had arrived in Iran. But weeks before, there had been reports of infected people spreading through the social networks.
Iran rapidly proved to be a country badly affected by the corona virus – even before the crisis became a global pandemic. Despite the delicate situation in China, the Iranian state did not stop air traffic to China until March 4th. Although the government under President Hassan Rouhani had announced that it would cancel flights to China, Mahan Air alone, the largest private airline in Iran, flew 16 times to and from China between late February and early March, according to BBC Farsi.
This provoked outrage among many people in Iran, most of whom attribute the continued air traffic to corruption in the state. The anger was heightened when Rouhani declared on 25 February that from 29 February “everything in the country will return to normal”. A few days later he had to admit that the virus had now reached all Iranian provinces.
Also the statements of the religious leader of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have also caused outrage in the social networks: “The virus is a biological attack on Iran”; “The virus was produced by the USA”, which is why “we do not accept any help from the USA”; “Corona is a small problem”, and it is not up to science to solve the problems of mankind, that is the task of the imams, Khamenei said in different speeches.
The misinformation and partly contradictory statements of the Iranian leadership about the seriousness of the Corona crisis weigh even more heavily for many people, as the virus has hit the country in the middle of an escalating economic and political crisis. The Otageasnafiran, the Iranian Chamber of Commerce, estimates that the corona crisis could cost up to 1.6 million people their jobs. In early April, the Iranian central bank applied for an emergency loan of five billion US dollars from the International Monetary Fund.
At a time when Corona was not yet a global pandemic, the Iranian state could not even prevent the rapid spread of the virus in the country; it even denied the fact that the virus spread to Iran early on. It was only on 24 March that Dr. Masoud Mardani, a member of the National Corona Committee, declared “that the corona epidemic very likely arrived in Iran much earlier than reported”.
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that the number of infected and dead is at least five times higher than the Iranian state admits. According to official figures, about 75,000 people were infected with the corona virus in mid-April, and more than 4,500 died of the disease. Even though the state is trying to control the flow of information by massively restricting the Internet and the freedom of the press, one thing is certain: a large part of the Iranian population does not believe the state’s statements. The distrust of the state is certainly reinforced by the lack of transparency about the extent of the Corona crisis, but this feeling is not new.
Old and new protests in Iran
In November 2019, the country had experienced massive protests against the government. The trigger was the tripling of gasoline prices. Shortly afterwards there were demonstrations in more than 100 cities. The state then switched off the Internet and brutally crushed the protests. When the Internet was switched on again a week later, the extent of the state’s power only became apparent. It is still unclear today how many people were murdered or imprisoned during this time. Amnesty International spoke of more than 300 deaths, according to the news agency Reuters even 1,500 people are said to have been killed.
In early January 2020, just a few weeks after the riots, the Revolutionary Guard shot down a passenger plane, killing 176 people. In this case too, the government denied having anything to do with it for three days. Many in Iran think that the only reason they finally admitted to shooting down the plane by mistake was because Canadian and European citizens were also killed.
Consequently Corona was a political and economic crisis in Iran from day one. The sanctions, which were again tightened by the USA, further intensified the effects of the crisis. It is remarkable that the Iranian state’s crisis of confidence is evident in this issue as well. In view of the massive corruption, many people who speak out in social networks think that even if the sanctions were lifted, the state would not let them benefit from this. Already in early 2018, when the nuclear agreement had not yet been cancelled, there had been mass protests against state corruption. During the harsh sanctions imposed by the US in the last two years, it has continued to rampage.
Now the government is demanding that people stay at home, but is taking no responsibility for the fact that the privatized health care system, inflation, the intensification of “international conflicts”, the privatization of factories and the lack of a welfare system are forcing people to leave their homes and work. In some hospitals there have already been protests by the staff because of the lack of protective clothing and the poor situation of the nursing staff, but so far these are isolated cases.
The situation is even worse in the overcrowded prisons. After reports of corona infections among prisoners and guards from several prisons, such as Evin Prison in Tehran, panic is spreading there and among the relatives of the 220,000 prisoners in Iran. The prisons are overcrowded and the sanitary facilities are often in poor condition. If the virus gets a foothold here, it can spread at lightning speed.
In at least eight prisons there have already been demonstrations, riots and – in some cases successful – escape attempts. The pressure is so great that up to 100,000 prisoners have been given temporary reprieve. However, Amnesty International also reported in early April that Iranian security forces had used live ammunition and tear gas in the prisons. At least 30 prisoners were murdered.