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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

Iran maintains a large fleet of submarines as the strategic port of Bandar Abbas, the majority of which are domestically manufactured. Most of Irans underwater fleet are midget submarines, designed for infiltration and sabotage, or small displacement submarines that may have limited endurance and dive depth. However, the Soviet Kilo-class is their bestagainst the U.S. Navy if a conflict were to ever occur.

Adapted Soviet Technology:

After a failed attempt to partner with North Korea on submarine manufacturing, Iran looked elsewhere for necessary submarine know-howRussia. Iran acquired three Soviet-built Kilo-class submarines in the early to mid-1990s that are among their most capable.

A U.S. Navy report explained how Iran as a submarine power could have drastically altered the environment in the Persian Gulf region.

In past Gulf conflicts, submarine threats to Western naval forces were nonexistent. This environment changed dramatically when Iran took delivery of three diesel-powered Kilo-class boats from Russia for $600 million each (because of delivery delays and additional crew proficiency training, Iran eventually paid $750 million for the third boat). The first boat arrived in Iran in November 1992, and the second Kilo pulled into Bandar Abbas in July 1993. Because of extensive U.S. pressure to cancel the deal, Russia held up delivery of Iran's third Kilo until December 1996.

Although the Kilo-class is a fairly modern submarine design, it had teething problems while in service with the Iranian navy. As the Kilo-class is diesel-electric, it has several large batteries that store electricity generated by on-board diesel engines.

These batteries were optimized for cold, blue-water ocean in which the Soviet Navy would typically have operated in, and not the comparably hot coastal waters of the Persian Gulf. With assistance from India, Iran was able to manufacture replacement batteries that were optimized for warm-water operations.

Two factors would likely hamper (or perhaps make impossible) American anti-submarine operations in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz. Because of the Gulfs relatively shallowness and unpredictable heat patterns, anti-submarine sonar would be nearly useless, due to difficulties in sonar operation when not at depth.

Compounding the problem in the Persian Gulf are the complicated conditions in the Strait of Hormuz. A meager supply of freshwater from the Gulf into the Straight, coupled with high temperatures that cause a great deal of evaporation results in a very saline environment. This high-salt environment creates complex underwater currents[that] makes antisubmarine acoustic detection of the submerged Kilos almost impossible.

The Kilo-class is also very difficult to track. Part of the difficulty is due to anechoic tiles that parts of the Kilo-class hulls were equipped with. Anechoic tiles are essentially large rubberized tiles embedded with air bubbles of varying sizes that deflect or absorb sonar. Some types of anechoic tiles also have surface pockmarks that serve the same purpose.

Natural Limitations

Despite the difficulties in anti-submarine operations in both the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, the Iranian submarine movement would be severely limited by the shallow depth, especially in the Gulf. A scanty one-third of the Gulfs narrow water area is deep enough to meet the Kilo's minimum submerged depth requirement of 100 feet. This would likely limit the usefulness of Irans Kilo-class inside the Gulf, though they would pose a very serious threat outside the Gulf.

Caleb Larson is a Defense Writer with The National Interest. He holds a Master of Public Policy and covers U.S. and Russian security, European defense issues, and German politics and culture.

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Iran's Russian-Built Kilo-Class Submarines: Real Threat to the U.S. Navy? - The National Interest

Irans drones have typically been knock-off western technology with limited ordinance capacity and very limited range when compared to their American counterparts. But, Tehrans drone program be getting a GPS boost.

Shahed 129

Irans drone program operates a variety of Unmanned Arial Vehicles (UAVs). The backbone of their UAV program is the Shahed 129, a large-sized armed drone, visually similar to the American General Atomics MQ-1 Predator, though the Predator is a vastly more capable platform.

While the earlier (presumable first-generation) Shahed 129s had a thinner, more pencil-shaped fuselage, the newer models have a distinctly Predator-like nose bulge, presumably to accommodate a synthetic-aperture radar antenna, a higher-resolution radar system, or perhaps a link for satellite-based navigation.

The early-model Shahed 129s (and possibly the newer models as well) were limited not so much by fuel capacity as by their data-link capacity.

The United States MQ-1 Predators can be operated from virtually anywhere in the world, while the Shahed 129 is reliant on a ground operator. If true, dependence on a ground-based controller would likely limit the Shahed 129s range to 200-400 kilometers (125-250 miles).

Pit Stop

In 2015, a Shahed 129 crashed near the Iran-Pakistan border. This early-model Shahed may have flown outside of the ground-based controllers range or run out of fuel. Photos of the downed drone showed what appeared to be two or possibly four hardpoints for bombs and/or missile attachment.

Although Iranian drones have usually taken an observational role, rather than a direct-action stance, Iranian drone capabilities have slowly been shifting towards an offensive ground attack role.

Armed and Dangerous

Irans drones have been wreaking havoc in the Middle East. This video shows a Shahed 129 taking off and retracting its landing gear.

Back in February of 2016, an Iranian drone, presumably a Shahed 129, was seen with what appeared to be a missile similar to what has been seen in Iranian state media.

Several Shahed 129s made an appearance in Syrias civil war again in 2017, two of which were shot down by American F-15Es. One of the drones was apparently able to drop ordinance on or near Syrian fighters before it was shot down.

Going Global?

In 2016, a Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Air Force commander implied that Iran was in the process of upgrading their drone fleet in order to end its reliance on ground-based controllers towards a satellite-based system. This may be the reason for the nose bulges seen in the newer model Shahad 129s.

If claims about GPS-navigable Shahed 129s are credible, then Iran presumably has the ability to use GPS navigation in tandem with other weapons systems, namely ballistic weapons.

If true, this lessens the technological military advantage of both regional adversaries (Israel), and those of the United States. This tech could be exported to Irans regional allies like Hezbollah in Lebanon, Yemen, or indeed to Syria, where this has presumably already happened.

Caleb Larson is a Defense Writer with The National Interest. He holds a Master of Public Policy and covers U.S. and Russian security, European defense issues, and German politics and culture.

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Shahed 129: Iran's Very Own Predator Drone That Fights F-15s? - The National Interest