Lack of face masks in the market is hardly counted as a sign of improper policies implied by the state, but it became Tehran’s significant political failure when it provided some 2-million masks to China on .humanitarian grounds when it was almost sure CoronaVirus had hit its own resident

Many believe the delay in announcing the touch of CoronaVirus on Iran by its officials were due to the Parliamentary elections in mid-February, as in Iran the high turn-out signals democratically “installed” staff of the government body; whilst, the first CoronaVirus-related fatality took place only two days after marking the anniversary of the Islamic Republic on Febraury 11^th, taking back the date of the .virus input to early this month

The virus’s entry date became an area of dispute even between Iranian authorities. Ahmad Amirabadi Farahani, the MP from Corona-stricken city of Qom some 100-kilometer south of the capital Tehran, announced at least 50 deaths out of CoronaVirus, and hundreds of infected people in the parliamentary session. The numbers given out by Amirabadi were over 4 times more than the official casualty number the Health Ministry had provided the media with. The MP and the Health Minister became engaged a verbal fight over the real number of deaths, one of them providing the victims names as the proof, and the other threatening to resign as the “head of the crisis committee” over the fabricated statistics.

Apart from the date of the virus entry, how the health workers were equipped became another subject of argument between the high ranking officials. There are not enough test-kits, shielding dresses, or even work forces on the frontline of the fight with CoronaVirus. Lack of facilities, as an instance, made four pulmonologists brought to Qom flee the city overnight. Lack of facilities, also, became a matter of taking on the lame duck president by the principlists, who take advantage of every man-made or even natural disasters which could overshadow government’s services.

Meanwhile, another quarrel broke out in the National Security Council, over the government-proposed move to quarantine Qom. Hossein Taeb, the Head of IRGC’s Intelligence, rejected the proposal, saying Qom is the honor of the Islamic Revolution and Islam on the whole, and quarantining the city would result in the US media disgracing the religion! But, he did not note his own statement served to disgrace not only Qom, but also the Islamic Revolution entirely. Today, there are confirmed CoronaVirus infected cases found in every corner of Iran, including the distant island of Qeshm.

It is far from mind that the authorities were not informed of the virus threat and its entry to Iran, as they had already seen that many other countries not only suspended their flights to China, but also established on-way outgoing flights to take the Chinese, whether or not suspected of being infected by the virus, to their own home country.

Learning about the spread-out in china, Iran had many ways to take to prevent entry of the virus; though, it disregarded all the rest of the world took into consideration in time, just another misconduct by the people in power who do not care about the lives of prosperity of people outside power.

25/2/2020

Hamid Reza is an Iranian journalist based in Tehran.