Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Judge Iran’s coronaviru­s crisis by its deeds, not words

Tehran seems unable to take the epidemic seriously

- Bobby Ghosh Bobby Ghosh is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion.

How serious is Iran about its coronaviru­s epidemic? That depends on whether we believe the Islamic Republic’s words or actions — and, in some crucial aspects of crisis management, its inaction.

On the one hand, the regime in Tehran is asking for $5 billion in financial aid from the Internatio­nal Monetary Fund, ostensibly to fight the virus crisis. On the other, its proxy militias in Iraq have stepped up rocket strikes on military bases housing American and other NATO troops. President Hassan Rouhani has indicated more are coming.

This egregious belligeren­ce against a country that has unique sway over IMF decisions is so obviously foolish, you have to wonder about the sincerity of the aid request. More likely, the regime is counting on a U.S. veto, so it can deflect blame for the crisis away from itself and on to the ever-reliable bogeyman.

Now, after weeks of denying the gravity of the crisis, the regime has begun to warn that it will kill hundreds of thousands — and possibly millions — of Iranians. State TV is citing a study by Tehran’s Sharif University of Technology, which posits three scenarios: If people fully cooperate with official health guidance and travel restrictio­ns, 120,000 will be infected and 12,000 will die; if there is “medium cooperatio­n” with the warnings, there will be 300,000 cases and 110,000 deaths. If people ignore the guidance altogether, there will be 4 million cases, and 3.5 million deaths.

State television did not explain the metrics used in the Sharif University study. The figures imagine mortality rates — 10%, 36% and 87.5% — so far in excess of the World Health Organizati­on’s estimate of 3.4% that they invite skepticism.

At the same time, regime officials have stepped up a campaign to blame American sanctions for the crisis. The not-so-subtle message: These deaths will be on President Donald Trump’s head.

Exaggerati­ng mortality rates and attributin­g them to sanctions is a familiar tactic. In the 1990s, the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein claimed economic sanctions had spiked infant deaths. A 1995 letter to the respected medical journal The Lancet claimed that hundreds of thousands of children might still be alive were it not for sanctions. This claim was extrapolat­ed from a Baghdad survey that relied on data from the Iraqi government. Two years later, after more fieldwork, the researcher­s retracted their previous results.

But U.N. officials continued to cite the high numbers, nonetheles­s. And in a macabre twist, British Prime Minister Tony Blair in 2010 used the exaggerate­d figures to retroactiv­ely justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

In 2017, a study by the London School of Economics concluded that reports of a doubling in Iraq’s child mortality after sanctions were imposed in 1990 were a “masterful fraud” by Saddam’s regime, “designed to provoke internatio­nal condemnati­on and get the sanctions lifted.” The study showed that child mortality in Iraq was nearly twice as high as those of neighborin­g countries, but there had been no spike between 1991 and 2003, when Saddam was toppled.

Back to Iran: The Islamic Republic is unquestion­ably in the throes of a severe epidemic. The official figures, over 17,300 infected and 1,135 dead, bear this out. Nor is there any gainsaying that the country needs outside help — although, as I have argued, this should be in kind, rather than cash.

But the effort to exaggerate the crisis and to blame it on the U.S. suggests that the regime, even now, is unable to take the epidemic seriously.

Other signs abound. The Iranian government has not yet declared a national emergency, or even imposed a lockdown on the capital, which has the largest number of reported cases. It is not clear who is to lead the fight against the virus — Mr. Rouhani’s civilian administra­tion or the military under Maj. Gen. Mohammad Bagheri. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who has described the virus as a “biological attack” against Iran (no prizes for guessing the attacker) is exercising his perennial right to power without responsibi­lity.

The Iranian regime’s actions — and inaction — in handling the virus crisis should guide the world’s response.

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