Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Saturday that deaths from Coronavirus in Iran were less than 100 per day, but the Iranian opposition Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK/PMOI) were reporting at least 500 people coronavirus deaths per day at the time.
However, he then appeared to backtrack by saying that the situation was fragile, even blaming people for any rise in infections, and a fourth wave would not only lead to increased hospital admissions but also deaths, which he referred to as “a rush to the cemeteries”. While health ministry spokesperson Alireza Raisi warned that each new wave would mean 8,000-10,000 new deaths, although that figure is likely much higher.
These ridiculously low death counts are just some of the bizarre claims made by the government, including that people in the U.S. and Europe are starving to death during the pandemic, while Iranians are “shedding tears of joy” because of the Islamic Republic’s assistance.
Of course, many Western governments have provided billions to save people from running out of money, while the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei sits on billions that have not been dished out.
Rouhani also reiterated that Iran will not have a vaccine until the summer at the earliest, promising domestic vaccines and a deal agreed with another country, even though the state-run media has mocked the domestic vaccine, citing medical experts from inside Iran, and condemned the previous deals with Cuba to test a vaccine not approved by the World Health Organisation on Iranians.
All while, Khamenei banned the import of approved vaccines from the UK and US, instead opting for the unapproved ones out of Russia, China, and India. Understandably, the public is outraged and regime officials are scrambling to justify this with baseless claims that the vaccines cause cancer, impotence, or are a method to implant “GPS chips” into humans to make them into robots.
Not only is this ludicrous and false, but even if we buy into the idea that humans can be turned into robots, a GPS chip couldn’t do that. It’s a global positioning satellite chip. It could, at most, track the locations of humans, but even this is unclear because we don’t tend to implant trackers into human flesh.
The media said that the government was “shooting itself in the leg” with these comments and increasing the tenseness of the situation, which the Iranian Resistance suggested could be the thing to cause the overthrow of the Iranian regime.