Poor management of COVID-19 crisis could lead to a new wave of protests in Iran, expert predicts

WASHINGTON – The high death toll in Iran, combined with a lack of accountability from the Iranian regime, created unrest that could lead to more riots or in a less-likely scenario to the collapse of the Ayatollah regime, said Mohsen Sazegara, president of the Research Institute on Contemporary Iran.

Speaking at a video event hosted by the Hudson Institute in Washington

and moderated by Michael Doran, a Senior Fellow in the Washington-based think tank, Sazegara said the impact of the coronavirus in Iran was huge. “Many mistakes showed that this regime is nothing but a propaganda machine and oppression machine, none of the other functions of a regime works there, including the Health ministry and other ministries,” he said.

Sazegara described a grim reality, in which the real number of COVID-19 cases is much higher in the Islamic Republic than the official data. “The department of health announced that the total infected people are about 95,000 to 100,000,” he noted. “But the medical system, the doctors, say that the estimation is more than 1.5 million around the country. About the death toll, the regime says that it’s about 6,000 or a little bit more, but the real death toll is more than 50,000.

“Every sector was affected,” he continued. “The security forces – police say that now they are short of personnel in police stations, especially in small towns. One of the militias of revolutionary Guards has been reduced to half. Inside the IRGC revolutionary guard, there are many sick leaves,” said Sazegara.

He also said that COVID-19 could lead to shortages of food. “Although spring has started, 30% of the land has not been cultivated.”

The next step, he predicted, might be a new wave of protests. “Last November, we had an uprising in more than 220 cities of Iran, with an average of 1000 people, but it was crushed by the regime very brutally. At least 1500 people were killed,” he said. “But now, those poor people, estimated in some 22 million in Iran, out of [the country’s] 84 million population, they are more hungry. And now the fear of illness has been added to that. I have seen the reports from inside the regime, from the Ministry of Intelligence of Iran, they think that the crisis is underway, much bigger than last November, and protests will go all around the country.”

“I estimate there is about 30% chance for a collapse of the regime because of the unrest not only in the society but inside the regime as well,” Sazegara added. The second option will be crisis after crisis, riots after riots, and somehow endless crisis all around the country.”