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Iranian women wear protective masks to prevent contracting coronavirus, as they walk in Tehran, Feb. 25, 2020. Photo: WANA (West Asia News Agency) / Nazanin Tabatabaee via Reuters.

From Biblical times through the Nazi Holocaust, to the present suffering in northeast Nigeria, to our local emergency room, mans reaction to innocents suffering has often prompted the same question: Where is G-d?

When it comes to COVID-19, no one can blame G-d. Its people who have gotten us into this coronavirus mess, and it is people with G-ds help who can help heal a world deathly ill from it.

We are beginning to see how we got here, and as we do, we must take our own medicine. That medicine isthe truth. And you dont have to look to the Heavens to find the truth, in this case.

While there is plenty of blame to go around for mistakes and failures made as COVID-19 spread mistakes and failures made as the coronavirus had spread throughout the United States and European Union, some segments of our religious communities, and beyond we must call out two of the main culprits who helped it spread: Beijing and Tehran.

March 31, 2020 7:31 am

The Chinese government is playing us all for fools and they need to come clean, owning their culpability in the pre-pandemic phases of COVID-19.

A few Chinese doctors identified the virus as early as November (though they were unaware of what it fully was at the time), and the mayor of Wuhan, before being fired, admitted in January that over five million people from Wuhan were allowed to leave the city before the travel restrictions had been enacted. The Chinese government then proceeded to weaponize medical supplies by importing from countries that might need it 20 million respirators. The Chinese leadership also initially downplayed the true extent of the threat both to their own people and the outside world. These are facts.

It is also a fact that two spokespersons from its Ministry of Foreign Affairs have engaged in a blood libel against the United States military by claiming that it may have brought the coronavirus to Wuhan. The Chinese misinformation campaign might work with a few million of their own citizens and others who hate America, but there will be a day after this disaster when such behavior may very well put the nail in the coffin of the booming China-US economic pipeline. After all, multiple United States senators have already drawn a legislative line in the sand, demanding that we disentangle Americas economy from China.

And before we laud China for sending desperately needed medical help to Italy, lets not forget that the Chinese actuallysold some of that aid to Italy.It wasnt a donation. All of this whilethe Chinese government threatened to withhold medical supplies from the United States.

Equally complicit in the spread of coronavirus is the inhumane regime in Iran, whose total disregard for human life was especially reserved for its own citizens in this health crisis.

Here is another fact: the Iranians allowed faithful pilgrims to continue to travel to the Holy City of Qom, despite the fact that the virus was already raging there. Now, every Gulf nation, and many beyond, are struggling to contain this pandemic.

Why?

Because Iranian leader Ayatollah Khamenei suffers from a more powerful virus than the coronavirus. He is consumed by hate: hate of America, hate of Israel, hate of Bahais, hate of Hindus, of gays, and hate of atheists. What makes his behavior especially evil is that he appropriates the name of Allah when committing it. He is a clergyman who has sunk billions of dollars into the nuclearization of his hate in order to prop up terrorist operations in Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, and beyond. Just this week the Houthis in Yemen, who Khamenei controls, upheld a death sentence against an innocent member of the Bahai community.

On COVID-19, Khameneis hate runs so deep that he claims he would reject any thought of humanitarian help to fight the pandemic from the US.

What the extremist dictator of Iran didnt tell his citizens is that he had already rejected help offered by the United States help which was offered in February, conveyed through the government of Switzerland. And just this week, Khameneis regime ordered Doctors Without Borders to immediately leave the countryand cease their efforts to establish an intensive care hospital in Isfahan.

As Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has noted, Khamenei has also stolen 1 billion euros intended for medical supplies [while hoarding] desperately needed masks, gloves and equipment.The Europeans recently pledged to provide another $20 million euros they probably need to fight their own pandemic.

Lets be clear: the Iranian leader doesnt care about his people. He cares about exploiting this crisis in order to loosen US sanctions. Otherwise, he would utilize his own personal fortune to help his people, a fortune in excess of $200 billion.

If Khamenei cared, Iranian officials wouldnt have continued to allow flights between Tehran and China while the virus was spreading on their Mahan Airline. In fact, he probably celebrated when he learned that one of the first reported cases of COVID-19 in New York City now the global epicenter of the pandemic came from someone who had traveled from Iran.

Should it surprise us that two of the worlds great violators of human rights have so little regard for human life?

No but it should anger us that the head of the World Health Organization and the Secretary-General of the United Nations are being allowed to not make stronger statements on Iran. Moreover, Secretary-General Guterres has in effect joined Irans lobbying efforts to lift their sanctions on humanitarian grounds.

And, to be clear, these truths should not be used by racists, xenophobes and conspiracy addicts to demonize Muslims, the Iranian people, Asian-Americans, Jews or others. We can fight against that bigotry by defining exactly who we are talking about, and standing arm-in-arm with our neighbors when they are subject to vitriol, whether online or in our neighborhoods.

We appreciate the president addressing this concern when he tweeted, It is very important that we totally protect our Asian-American community in the United States and all around the world. They are amazing people, and the spreading of the Virus is NOT their fault in any way, shape, or form. They are working closely with us to get rid of it. We will prevail together.

He is right.

He is also right to hold accountable, with specificity, those foreign actors whose decisions have unnecessarily imperiled millions around the world.

So this isnt a time to blame G-d, our Compassionate Father in Heaven, who is protecting and guiding our medical heroes and comforting those who suffer. May He also give us the strength to show compassion to strangers and to nurture those in need.

He, like his children, sees the truth.

Rabbi Abraham Cooper is the associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.Rev. Johnnie Moore is the president of the Congress of Christian Leaders.

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China, Iran and the Spread of Coronavirus | Jewish & Israel News - Algemeiner

U.S. Army soldiers from the 82nd Airborne board a C-17 aircraft at Fort Bragg, N.C., to be deployed to the Middle East on Jan. 1, 2020.

Photo: Melissa Sue Gerrits/The Fayetteville Observer via AP

The news is all coronavirus. Whether its cable news, national newspapers, public radio, or even my own Intercept podcast, we cant get away from it.

The pandemic has overwhelmed us all; we talk, think, dreamof little else.

But let me try and grab your attention for a few moments and point you in a different direction. How many of you noticed a rather disturbing New York Times story from Mark Mazzetti and Eric Schmitt last week that was headlined, Pentagon Order to Plan for Escalation in Iraq Meets Warning From Top Commander? You didnt? Well, in the midst of all the virus-related doom and gloom, it managed to send new shivers down my spine.

From the Times:

The Pentagon has ordered military commanders to plan for an escalation of American combat in Iraq, issuing a directive last week to prepare a campaign to destroy an Iranian-backed militia group that has threatened more attacks against American troops.

But the United States top commander in Iraq has warned that such a campaign could be bloody and counterproductive and risks war with Iran. In a blunt memo last week, the commander, Lt. Gen. Robert P. White, wrote that a new military campaign would also require thousands more American troops be sent to Iraq and divert resources from what has been the primary American military mission there: training Iraqi troops to combat the Islamic State.

Got that? A new military escalation in Iraq by the U.S. government risks war with Iran. Thats the blunt view of the top U.S. general on the ground.

A conflict with Iran, as I have repeatedly pointed out, would be a strategic and humanitarian disaster. The United States would end up killing thousands of innocent Iranians; Tehran would lash out via proxy groups across the region, as well as the wider world; U.S. troops in Iraq would have a target on their backs; oil and gas prices would skyrocket. To quotethe former head of U.S. Central Command, Gen. Anthony Zinni, Like I tell my friends, if you like Iraq and Afghanistan, youll love Iran.

Question: What kind of maniac risks such a war in the middle of a global pandemic?

Answer: President Donald Trump, aided and abetted by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and national security adviser Robert OBrien. As the Times notes, they have been pushing for aggressive new action against Iran and its proxy forces and see an opportunity to try to destroy Iranian-backed militia groups in Iraq as leaders in Iran are distracted by the pandemic crisis in their country.

To be clear: An Iranian dies from Covid-19 every 10 minutes, while 50 people become infected in the Islamic Republic every single hour. The death toll is fast approaching 3,000.Yet for Trump and his top aides, this is an opportunity to push their hawkish, nay ghoulish, agenda.

As is so often the case, though, the U.S. military leadership is less keen on a new Middle East conflagration than the U.S. civilian leadership. Military leaders, including Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper and Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have been wary of a sharp military escalation, reports the Times, warning it could further destabilize the Middle East at a time when President Trump has said he hopes to reduce the number of American troops in the region.

Remember the U.S. assassination of Iranian general and spymaster Qassim Suleimani on January 3? It feels like a lifetime ago. The Trump administration claimedat the time that the killing of Suleimani was aimed at deterring future Iranian retaliation plans.

How did that work out? On Saturday, the Washington Post reported that Iran-backed militias are becoming more audacious in attacking U.S. personnel in Iraq, with rocket strikes against military bases occurring more frequently and, for the first time, in broad daylight.

So by the administrations own metrics, as Matt Duss, foreign policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders, tweeted, the assassination of Suleimani failed to achieve its goal. But according to the unfalsifiable logic of maximum pressure the only answer is always more pressure, more escalation.

More pressure. More escalation. This is precisely what Lt. Gen. Robert P. White seems to have been trying to warn against. Will anyone, though, heed his warning? Will Democrats in Congress be willing or able to call for hearings on the administrations reckless and dangerous Iran policy, in the midst of our current coronavirus crisis? Trump and his underlings dont seem to care about the domestic implications of starting a new foreign war. This is an administration that publicly announces a fresh round of punitive sanctions on Irans battered economy, while privately urging U.S. military commanders to escalate a conflict with the Iranians on Iraqi soil.

Less than two weeks ago, in a piece about the cruelty and callousness of maintaining sanctions on Iran while a pandemic rages across that country, I described the people in charge of the U.S. government as sociopaths. Now we discover, courtesy of an internal memo written by a U.S. general and leaked to the New York Times, that strangling the Iranian economy isnt enough for Trump and Co. They are bent on using the spread of a deadly disease as cover for a new war.

Perhaps sociopaths was an understatement.

Original post:
Beware of Trump Using the Coronavirus as a Cover for War With Iran - The Intercept

There are many reasons why Iran has become the Middle Easts flaming epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic. They include the government trying to hide the outbreak; insufficient testing capacity; refusal to cordon off cities and Shiite shrines; superstition, politicization, and propaganda blaming Irans usual enemies; and the lack of seriousness in dealing with the crisis.

All these factors undoubtedly play a role, but there is another, far less public suspect for bringing the disease to Iran and worsening its spread among the population: a private Iranian airline tied to the regimes ideological army and sanctioned by the United States, which continued uninterrupted flights to and from China, including Wuhan, many weeks after the epidemic had already broken out. Bahram Parsaei, a member of Irans parliament, recently singled out Mahan Air and Irans Civil Aviation Organization as the prime suspects behind the countrys devastating outbreak.

What has made the suspicions worse are contradictory statements and misinformation coming from officials and airline executives. On Jan. 31, the Iranian government announced the suspension of all flights to and from China. But arrival and departure information furnished by Tehrans Imam Khomeini Airport, as well as by Chinese airports, showed that flights by Mahan Air between both countries continued for another full weekincluding one direct evacuation flight from Wuhan, ground zero for the virus. Other data showed flights continuing into March.

The airline, while privately owned, has links to Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its Quds Force, an intelligence and special operations unit that has been designated a terrorist organization by the United States and other governments. Mahan Air has been sanctioned by Washington for helping the IRGC ferry arms and personnel in support of Bashar al-Assads government in Syrias brutal civil war. In a tweet on Feb. 2, Chinas ambassador to Iran, Chang Hua, noted that Mahan Air CEO Hamid Arabnejad said he wished to continue cooperating with China. Two days later, the semiofficial Iranian Students News Agency criticized these ongoing flights and not for the first time. In a press release, Mahan Air claimed it ended all emergency repatriation flights from Wuhan and elsewhere by Feb. 5.

[Mapping the Coronavirus Outbreak: Get daily updates on the pandemic and learn how its affecting countries around the world.]

Yet even after this date, Mahan Air continued to ply the routes between Tehran and four major Chinese citiesBeijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhenat least 55 times by Feb. 23, according to a tally by the U.S.-sponsored Radio Farda based on Flightradar24 data. Even on March 4, two weeks after the government announced Irans first two official deaths from COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, Mahan Air was still flying to Beijing and Shanghai and had just resumed direct flights to Guangzhou and Shenzhen.

Mahan Air continued to misinform about its flights. Around Feb. 20, the airline claimed it had in recent days flown only cargo flights providing humanitarian assistance to China, while all passenger flights had been grounded. But the flight tracker data shows passenger flights, not cargo. The flight data seems more trustworthy: Given Irans severe shortages of face masks, sanitizer, medicine, and medical equipmentpartly a result of U.S. sanctionsit strains the imagination to believe that the country was scrambling dozens of planeloads of health assistance to China at a time when its own coronavirus outbreak was rapidly worsening.

Iranian authorities had been quashing reports of the outbreak. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani claims Feb. 19 as the date the government first realized the virus had arrived in Iran, after the first two deaths reported in Qom that day. But signs had been abundantly in evidence long before. Furthermore, a government document dated Feb. 19 seems to acknowledge cases in Qom as of Jan. 31. Yet precautionary measures were delayed until after the Feb. 21 parliamentary elections.

As the situation worsened in Iran, Mahan Air continued to fly to and from China, including eight planeloads of emergency medical equipment from China. According to Minister of Roads and Urban Development Mohammad Eslami, Mahan Air also flew three flights to repatriate Iranians, including one from Wuhan to bring back Iranian students.

Given shortages of test kits and other equipment in Iran, it is highly unlikely that aviation and health authorities were able to ensure proper disinfection and diagnosis on arrival. Even today, the World Health Organization suspects Iran has diagnosed only a fraction of the true number of cases.

Mahan Air is also suspected to have flown Chinese nationals on those supposed cargo flights. Deputy Health Minister Alireza Raisi recently said epidemiological studies showed that COVID-19s origins in QomIrans equivalent of Wuhanwere clearly and specifically linked to Chinese workers and university students. (He was presumably referring to seminary students at Qoms Al-Mustafa International University, a center of Shiite indoctrination with some 40,000 foreign students.) The suspected link between Mahan Air flights and the start of the outbreak in Qom has gained traction among some Iranians; some on social media even claimed that Iranians had, at Qom airport, attacked a Mahan Air aircraft with stones.

The Mahan Air affair is symptomatic of Irans outsized dependency onand need to pleaseChina, which has only grown since the start of the crisis. The pandemic has isolated Iran in a way that military, diplomatic, and economic pressure has not been able to. Even though bilateral trade dropped by over a third between 2018 and 2019, and Irans oil exports to China dwindled by over 82 percent between April and November 2019, China remains Irans single most important trade partner and customer for its oil and gas. According to another deputy health minister, Reza Malekzadeh, among the reasons for ongoing flights to China were bilateral economic relations. Beijing, along with Russia, also remains Irans most important patron and protector, especially on the United Nations Security Council.

Rouhani has called for Iranians to trust his governments efforts to contain the pandemic. Yet trust between the population and its leaders has become dangerously thin, giving the government all the more reason to release Mahan Airs flight manifest. Otherwise, continued speculation in Iran over the pandemics origins risks spilling over into open antagonism toward everything Chinese, including thousands of workers, traders, and students in Iran. Such public resentment would put Tehran in an even more difficult position with Beijing. It could also undermine the regimes continued hold on power. Already, recent months have seen unprecedentedly violent anti-regime protests and the lowest parliamentary electoral turnout in post-revolutionary Irans history.

Meanwhile, Irans economy is tanking under unrelenting U.S. sanctions, the lowest oil prices since 2002, and a collapse in global trade as the pandemic spreads. For the first time, the Central Bank of Iran has requested $5 billion in emergency assistance from the International Monetary Fund. On top of everything, the disease is killing a growing number of political, security, and religious figures in a country run by men in their 60s and far beyond. Officials even had to quash rumors that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 80, tested positive.

As one of the worst-hit epicenters of the pandemic, Iran is in uncharted waters. Many of the governments decisions have made the crisis worse for the Iranian population, and there continues to be little transparencyincluding about the role played by Mahan Air. As Iranians continue to fall ill and die from the new disease, the regimes legitimacy among its own people may be at stake like never before.

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How an Iranian Airline Tied to Terrorism Likely Spread the Virus (and Lied About It) - Foreign Policy

While the world focuses on the coronavirus pandemic, tensions between the US and Iran are heating up.

The two countries are engaging in tit-for-tat military attacks that threaten a wider war. In mid-March, Washington officials accused an Iran-allied militia of launching rockets at a US military base in Iraq, killing two American soldiers and one British soldier. The Pentagon retaliated with a missile strike against the group Kataib Hezbollahin Iraq, killing militiamen, five Iraqi servicemen, and a civilian who was also at the base. On March 26 rockets once again hit near the US Embassy in Baghdads Green Zone.

The Pentagon sent two aircraft carriers to the region, claiming in a March 19 Navy statement that the US is protecting freedom of navigation and [the] free flow of commerce. Threatening a possible military attack on Iran, the Navy said the carriers provide the combatant commander significant striking power for contingency operations.

Leaders in Washington and Tehran say they dont want a full-scale war, but they are playing a dangerous game. And the people of Iraq will suffer the consequences.

Iraq has become a proxy war between the US and Iran, says Raed Jarrar, an Iraqi-born human rights activist and writer based in Washington, D.C., in a phone interview. Iraq is paying in blood and treasure.

How it all began

In 2018, US President Donald Trump unilaterally pulled out of the nuclear accord with Iran and imposed harsh sanctions on Tehran. Iran waited a year to see if the European signatories to the accordBritain, France, and Germanywould live up to the agreement by engaging in normal trade and investment. The Europeans knuckled under to Trump, so Iran decided to slam down its fist.

By mid-2019, oil tankers from US-allied countries came under attack. Iran seized a U.K. tanker and shot down a US drone. Iran also pulled back from some provisions of the nuclear accord.

At the end of 2019, Iran-allied militias launched rocket and mortar attacks on US bases in Iraq. Washington portrays these militias as tools of Iran. Groups such as Kataib Hezbollah do receive arms and training from Iran, but they are also now part of the Iraqi army.

The US picks its favorites within the Iraqi military as well, arming and training Kurdish militias and Iraqi army special forces.

Kataib Hezbollah and similar Iran-allied militias initially bore the brunt of fighting ISIS, according to Patrick Theros, a former US ambassador to Qatar and now a strategic advisor to the Gulf International think tank in Washington, D.C.

The militias are not Iranian controlled, Theros tells me in a phone interview. The Iranians cant just send an order and be confident it will be obeyed.

But the Trump Administration acts as if the militias are extensions of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, as seen in the January 3 assassination of Iranian military leader Qasem Soleinmani and Iraqi militia head Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.

Assassinations backfire

Those assassinations were a huge mistake, according to Nader Talebzadeh, an analyst and influential TV host in Iran. What the American President did was unify the Iranian people and took things to a different level, he tells me in an interview.

Ordinary Iraqis were even more outraged at the murder of al-Muhandis, who was an extremely popular leader in the fight against ISIS, according to Theros.

Were killing Iraqis, not Iranians, Theros says. That affects the attitudes toward us.

The Iraqi parliament passed a resolution calling for the withdrawal of all foreign troops. Iraqi military leaders demanded that Washington get permission from top Iraqi leadership prior to launching another retaliatory raid.

Trump responded to these assertions of Iraqi sovereignty by threatening to impose harsh sanctions and seize Iraqs central bank reserves held by the Federal Reserve Bank in New York.

That makes us look like an occupying force, Theros notes wryly.

Resentment of Iran

Iraqis have plenty of legitimate complaints against the leaders in Tehran. Iranian troops entered Iraq to assist the fight against ISIS, but stayed to spread Iranian influence. Many resent Irans role in supporting brutal and corrupt Iraqi politicians.

Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis took to the streets in late 2019, protesting both the US and Iranian presence. Demonstrators burned down two Iranian consulates. Ordinary Iraqis were furious at the lack of electricity, water, and widespread government corruption. Iranian-allied militias and government forces brutally suppressed the peaceful demonstrations,killing more than 600 people and injuring tens of thousands.

The demonstrations forced the resignation of Prime Minister Mohammed Tawfiq Allawi on March 1. Adnan al-Zurufi was appointed the new prime minister, but parliament must confirm him by mid-April. Al-Zurufi had lived in the US for years and holds dual US/Iraqi citizenship. He returned to Iraq after the 2003 US invasion, and Washington installed him as governor of Najaf province.

Iraqi politicians are wheeling and dealing over al-Zurufis nomination. He has US backing and is hoping for Iranian support as well.

The opposition street protestors see al-Zurufi as part of the old establishment they oppose, but their numbers have dwindled. While thousands had occupied Baghdads Tahrir Square at the height of protests last year, only a few hundred remain today.

But Theros says the world shouldnt write off Iraqs protest movement. Unless the government addresses the issues they were protesting, they will be back, he says. Its gone dormant, but its not dead.

US policy failure

Iran currently faces a series of crises: low international oil prices, major flooding in the south, and a spreading coronavirus pandemic.

Harsh, unilateral US sanctions have severely damaged the Iranian economy but have not changed Irans policies in the region. Nor has US military action.

Nevertheless, the Trump Administration is pressuring the new Iraqi prime minister to cut off imports of Iranian gas and electricity, in keeping with US sanctions. For the moment, Washington has given Iraq waivers to allow trade to continue. Many Iraqis dont like Iran but the economies of the two countries are deeply intertwined.

They cant do it, Theros says. They have no choice but to choose Iran over the US.

So the ball is in the US court. Trump can continue his maximum pressure campaign against Iran and face continued Iraqi attacks on US troops. Or he can back off to focus on domestic concerns and avoid a wider war.

Iranians can wait. They may yet see regime change in Washington this November, long before it comes to Tehran.

Reese Erlichs nationally distributed column, Foreign Correspondent, appears every two weeks. He is author of The Iran Agenda Today: The Real Story Inside Iran and Whats Wrong with US Policy. Follow him onTwitter, @ReeseErlich; friend him on Facebook; and visit his webpage.

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Foreign Correspondent: US beats the drums of war in Iran | 48 hills - 48 Hills

In an open letter, 100 Iranian political and civic activists have accused the Islamic Republic Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei of turning the outbreak of Covid-19 into a national disaster across the country.

Furthermore, they have also slammed the Islamic Republic President Hassan Rouhani for aligning himsels with Khamenei in covering up the facts and attributing the novel coronavirus outbreak in Iran to an "enemy plot".

All the signatories of the letter, including former consultant at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Behrouz Bayat, Physical Chemistry expert Mehran Mostafavi, and Radio Zamaneh's former Managing-Director Mehdi Jami are based outside Iran.

The activists argue that Islamic Republic leaders covered up the outbreak of the deadly virus, lest it discouraged people from participating in the celebration of the Islamic Revolution in February followed by national elections, adding, "Thus, a golden opportunity to contain the dangerous virus was wasted."

The Head of the Epidemiology Committee of Iran's Coronavirus Combat Taskforce on Saturday admitted coronavirus (SARS-2-CoV) was spreading in Iran without being noticed since around January 20.

In a video conference with reporters, Dr. Ali-Akbar Haqdoust said there was a delay in the detection of the virus in Iran. Iranian Health Ministry officials have until now insisted that the virus arrived in the country about two weeks later, in February.

Earlier in March, Khamenei had maintained that the country's coronavirus outbreak could be part of a "biological attack on the Islamic Republic."

Speaking on the occasion of the new Iranian year (beginning March 20), Khamenei grabbed the chance to expand on his favorite topic, the "enemy."

There are two groups of enemies, humans and the "invisible" Jinns (djins).

The jinn, in his belief, are invisible supernatural creatures with extraordinary powers of destruction now working hand in hand with a host of other enemies.

Blasting Khamenei for such comments, as well as the Islamic Republic authorities' decision to expel the Paris-based Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) or Doctors Without Borders from Iran, the signatories of the letter state that the life and existence of every individual in the country is taken hostage by the Islamic Republic Supreme Leader, his advisors, and close allies.

Moreover, they have harshly criticized Khamenei for his reluctance to allocate one billion dollars from the National Development Fund to fight the spread of coronavirus. President Hassan Rouhani last week asked Khamenei to allocate the money for medical needs.

However, Khamenei had earlier endorsed allocating $222 million to the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps' (IRGC) extraterritorial arm, the Qods Force.

The signatories have also lambasted the Islamic Republic leaders for not granting furlough to all political prisoners whose lives are endangered by the Covid-19 outbreak behind bars.

According to the letter, the Islamic establishment is able to suppress widespread anti-regime protests within days, but unable to stop unnecessary inter-city travels to help reduce the spread of the coronavirus.

Based on the official data provided by the Islamic Republic Ministry of Health on Sunday, 2,640 have fallen victim to the Covid-19 in Iran.

Nevertheless, the data collected by Radio Farda shows that at least 4,298 people in Iran have died from the virus as of March 28.

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One Hundred Activists Blame Khamenei For Severity Of Coronavirus Outbreak In Iran - Iran News By Radio Farda