Iran and Covid-19

Prime Minister Imran Khan and Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi are trying in vain to get the US to change its Iran policy on humanitarian grounds. The duo has been appealing to world leaders to suspend sanctions on Iran, at least until the country’s coronavirus crisis is over. Iran is one of the countries hit worst by the Covid-19 coronavirus, with over 21,000 cases and 1,650 deaths confirmed on Sunday. Despite this, the US has bluntly said that the coronavirus crisis will not save Iran from their sanctions that are choking its economy. The statement was a hardening of the US stance, which seemed to be softening last month when President Donald Trump suggested Washington would be willing to help Iran if requested by Tehran.

Over the weekend, PM Imran, in his national address drew attention to Iran’s struggles to handle the deluge of coronavirus-infected people, a situation that is being further complicated by heavy sanctions. “I appeal to the international community to lift sanctions. It is the humane thing to do,” the PM said. But Iran’s leadership has also not helped its case by going the conspiracy theory route when speaking of the virus. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, most recently claimed that the virus was a US bioweapon, adding, “Possibly your medicine is a way to spread the virus more.” He also claimed the virus “is specifically built for Iran using the genetic data of Iranians, which they have obtained through different means”.

The same baseless claim has been made by Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lijian Zhao, while some Chinese state media has even accused Italy of being the source of the virus. Conversely, US Senator Tom Cotton has proven that Harvard has terrible admission standards by claiming the virus was a Chinese bioweapon. Even Trump has started referring to the virus as the “Chinese” virus to deflect gullible Americans from his mishandling of the crisis early on.

The fact is, at some point, each of these nations tried to cover up their failings in handling the crisis at the domestic and international level. Now they are blaming each other for those failures instead of working together to save lives. 

Published in The Express Tribune, March 24^th, 2020.

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