On the eve of the Iranian New Year, which falls this year on Friday March 20, the Islamic Republic is sinking further into the health crisis caused by the coronavirus epidemic. The official balance sheet, which largely underestimates the real figures according to a consensus shared by many Iranian caregivers reached Thursday, March 19 the 1,284 dead with 149 additional deaths. These are the highest number of daily deaths since the start of the crisis.
The real scope of the epidemic and the speed of its evolution are only very imperfectly documented, but for almost two months, Iran has been one of its main world foci. Two months of confusion at the head of the regime on the response to the crisis between conspiratorial rhetoric and disorderly concrete responses during which the Covid-19 epidemic considerably aggravated the political and economic crises the country was already facing before l outbreak of the virus.
“We have been honest with our people. We wereted no time, " declared on Wednesday the President of the Islamic Republic, Hassan Rohani, wanting to defend his action during the Council of Ministers. Authorities in the country have been widely criticized in recent weeks for acting too little, and especially too late, on suspicion of masking the scale of the epidemic.
Closure of the mausoleums
It was not until Monday that the closure of the Qom and Mashhad shrines was finally decided. A major place of pilgrimage, these mausoleums usually attract thousands of worshipers from all over the Shi'a every day. Called by many health professionals, the closure of sanctuaries, sites conducive to contagion, had so far been a limit not to be crossed for influential clerics close to the most powerful decision-making centers of the regime.
The head of the Fatima Massoumeh mausoleum in Qom, Ayatollah Mohammad Saeedi, said on Monday, however, that he had resolved to see the sanctuary closed with " broken heart ", sign of contrary currents which agitate the mode in the current crisis and which one finds in the contradictory positions. Friday, the Chief of the Defense Staff Mohammad Hussein Bagheri had said that he planned to quarantine the capital and several provinces of the country with the help of the armed forces and militias of the Basij, an announcement that had no effect. On Sunday, President Rohani thus rejected any quarantine, rebuffing the local authorities of the provinces who had called for such measures to be taken.
