The coronavirus obscures the vote in Iran

Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

The coronavirus alarm is obscuring the outcome of the vote for the new Parliament in Iran, the country with the highest number of victims outside the Far East: at least eight deaths recorded so far and dozens of the infected, even if the health authorities had Until yesterday tests have been carried out on about 785 suspected cases, most of them in the holy city of Qom, where the epidemic started. While even the official data confirm the obvious victory of the conservatives in the new Majlis (221 seats out of 290), and a participation rate in the historical lows puts into question the legitimacy of the Islamic Republic itself.

In the meantime, however, it is a mask hunt in pharmacies across the country. And many Iranians are shivering with anger at the delay with which the emergency was declared by the authorities only a few days ago, after weeks of denials. A delay that recalls the painful memory of the three days that the political and military leaders had taken before recognizing that the Ukrainian civilian plane with 176 people on board, crashed in early January near Tehran, had been shot down by mistake by missiles from the anti-aircraft of the Guardians of the Revolution the same night that the Iranian missile attack against two US bases in Iraq took place – an attack that was to be the first and contained act of retaliation for the killing of Qassem Soleimani, general of Sepah-e Pasdaran, by an American drone.

But the origins and extent of the current health emergency in Iran are not entirely unrelated to the reasons for the context of those two events, the last and most tragic links in a chain of events that also developed as a result of the policy of maximum pressure of the White House against Iran. And this for three reasons.

The first has to do with the fact that direct flights to China continued even when the epidemic had already developed in that country, despite a group of officials repeatedly asking the government to block all direct Mahan Air connections. . The second is that the coronavirus would have been brought to Iran – according to the latest news from the Ministry of Health – by a trader from Qom, who had traveled to China on indirect flights after the outbreak of the virus in Wuhan. What the ways actually followed by the virus, its spread in Iran has certainly to do with the fact that China is one of the few economic partners, as well as oil importers, on which Iran can still count on since the US released from the 2015 nuclear deal and imposed the toughest sanctions in Tehran over the past 40 years. The situation was briefly outlined by a member of the Tehran Chamber of Commerce: for reasons of national interest, Ali Shariati tweeted, “flights to China have continued and we have also sent (to the Chinese, ed) two million masks. Now we have coronavirus and we are without masks. ” So much so that it has now been decided to close schools and universities in the affected regions, and to close cinemas and theaters.

While among the infected, there would also be the president of a district of Tehran, who in turn would have had many contacts in the last few days with colleagues and also senior government officials. The difficulties in which the Iranian health system operates also refer to the same reasons, although the sanctions officially spare drugs, medical equipment, food and humanitarian goods. Significant difficulties not in arising but probably in emergency management, given that not all hospitals are equipped with suitable departments and structures. In short, a healthcare system already proven by sanctions could now find it more difficult to manage the infection. The health system in Iran is of high quality due to the professionalism of the operators, but has suffered a lot in recent years from the difficulty of accessing medicines and medical equipment that are not produced on site. Secondary sanctions that push international banks not to provide the means for payments hamper their imports – for which Tehran has also been proven by the International Court of Justice in The Hague. So much so that Switzerland has recently launched a special financial channel to make possible the supply of medical products requested by Tehran, and reserved in particular for cancer patients and transplant recipients. Italy too should have been involved in major investment and healthcare supply projects in Iran, before the new US sanctions made projects born after 2015 dead letter.

Having said that, the fact remains that the authorities admitted the spread of the virus only after two to three weeks from its inception and they would have done so, according to many, to ensure a high participation in the demonstrations for the anniversary of the revolution and the vote for the new Parliament. To determine this culpable delay it could have been on the one hand the fact that the Islamic Republic feels again under international siege, and therefore it must precisely reaffirm the full legitimacy of the system, on the other the fear that the news of the virus could feed further the distrust of the electorate, already determined by the economic difficulties and the tragic events of recent months. So much so that today the Ali Khamenei Guide accused foreign media of trying to “convince people not to vote on the pretext of spreading a virus” through “a huge negative propaganda”.

But abstention nevertheless came, reducing the share of voters to about 42.5% nationally according to official data (compared to 50% expected by the Guardian Council and 62% four years ago), and to 25% in the capital, which expresses 30 deputies. And so, with a parliament in the hands of ultraconservatives legitimized only by a small percentage of voters, the distance between citizens and rulers is destined to widen, already very marked by the hopes of the disappointed nuclear deal and the bloody repression of the November protests. Betrayed by the Trump administration and unable to solve the internal structural problems of the economy and the scourge of corruption, the moderate-reformist wing has been definitively defeated by the ballot box (after, on the other hand, it has been slain by the selection of candidates by the Guardian Council). And the new season will probably bring with it a further restriction of political and civil liberties internally, and much less dialoguing approaches in foreign policy.