Health experts question whether the Iranian government has the resources to manage the spread of the coronavirus
OFFICIALLY, IRAN’S hardliners won the parliamentary elections on February 21st by a landslide. They scooped over three-quarters of the legislature’s 290 seats and claimed a mandate for their confrontational stance towards America. Reformers and moderates, who seek more engagement with America and the West, did poorly.
The regime also seems to be deceiving itself about the coronavirus. Until February 18th it had insisted there were no cases in Iran. Now the authorities say at least 61 people have been infected and 12 have died of covid-19 . But they may be hiding the true scale of the outbreak. The official numbers suggest an unusually high mortality rate .
Iran is scrambling to contain the outbreak. It has closed schools and universities in much of the country. But health experts question whether it has the resources to manage the crisis. This is partly because of American sanctions imposed in 2018, when Donald Trump withdrew from the nuclear deal between world powers and Iran. With its economy in collapse and its currency shrivelling, Iran has struggled to import medicine and other supplies—including the kits used to diagnose coronavirus.
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