While in Israel the Coronavirus outbreak is still, somehow under control, Iran is rapidly becoming a devastated country as a result of the COVID-19 Virus and the Islamist regime is hiding the unprecedented disaster while doing not enough to contain the crisis.
Officially the regime says that 3.500 people were infected with the COVID-19 Virus while the official death toll is now 107.
“This disease is a widespread disease. It has reached almost all our provinces and in one sense it’s a global disease,” Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani admitted during a cabinet meeting in Tehran while reaffirming the official data about the Corona outbreak.
If we take a look at information coming from non-government sources inside and outside Iran we will understand Rouhani’s words were an understatement.
First of all, Iranian lawmakers such as Abdul Karim Hosseinzadeh revealed that in the holy Shiite city of Qom and Rasht another Iranian city the situation is so bad that streets are full of dead bodies.
"Corpses in Qom are piling up,” Hosseinzadeh wrote on his Twitter account.
The Iranian MP warned that if the regime doesn’t take appropriate action such as quarantining cities Iran will have the highest death toll in the world.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) refuses to seal off Qom, however, because of its holiness to Shiite Muslims so people are advised not to kiss the holy shrine in the city.
In Tehran the situation is not much better and experts warn that by the end of the Iranian month of Esfand (22 March) a staggering 40 percent of the population will be infected with the virus.
“We're estimating 30 to 40 percent of Tehran's (12 million people strong) population will be infected with COVID-19 by March 22,” Dr. Massoud Mardani, a member of Iran's National Influenza Committee said this week.
The Iranian opposition confirms that the number of people infected by the virus is much higher than the official data released by the Mullah’s.
MEK, the People’s Mujahedin Organization of Iran announced on Wednesday that already 1.300 Iranians had died after being infected with the virus.
Among the people who died are several regime officials and a close aide to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who still claims that Iran will easily overcome the disaster.
Twenty three members of the Majlis, the Iranian parliament, are, furthermore among the infected people.
Iran’s female vice President Masoumeh Ebtekar was confirmed infected by Corona one day after a Cabinet meeting which was presided by Rouhani.
Another high-ranking government official who died of COVID-19 is Mohammad Haj Abolghasemi, nicknamed “the Butcher”, a commander of the hated Basij militia of the IRGC that violently suppressed the recent popular uprising against Khamenei’s regime.
Iran’s overcrowded prisons have become Corona hotbeds and for this reason, the regime decided to temporarily release 54.000 inmates with sentences below five years who did test negative for the virus before getting released after posting bail.
A lack of preventive measures such as the distribution of masks and minimal hygiene in the overcrowded prisons is the reason for the explosion of COVID-19 cases in Iranian jails.
The regime has now decided to use the Basij militia for an effort to contain the Corona crisis.
Instead of creating special quarantine units in medical facilities the regime wants 300.000 Basij teams going door to door in Iranian cities, villages and towns to test people and refer them to hospitals if necessary.
Another measure taken to contain the COVID-19 outbreak is the closure of schools and universities across Iran for at least two weeks.
The IRGC, furthermore, has set up a “headquarters” officially to “suppress” the deadly virus but insiders say the regime fears a new uprising over the Corona disaster.
It may be too late, however.
The already faltering public trust in the Iranian regime is at an all-time low now and Iranians who were in contact with foreign reporters say that there is “a sense the fear of death on the streets of major cities as no state policy to combat this crisis has been put in place.”
Iranian traders say “business is finished” after the United States re-imposed heavy sanctions on Iran while the Islamic Republic’s oil and gas exports are further falling due to the global Corona crisis.
Another reason for the increasing crisis in Iran is the country’s isolation which has become worse since neighboring countries closed their borders.
With Khamenei’s regime increasingly in danger the IRGC now blames the unprecedented crisis on the US and Israel that is working hard to produce a vaccine against COVID-19.
The Migal Research Institute in the Galilee recently announced it had developed a “game-changing” vaccine against the Coronavirus which could enter the markets soon.
"Hopefully, in a few months, we'll have the final version that can go to humans," according to Migal’s CEO David Zigdon.