Ali Akbar Velayati with Iran’s Supreme Leader (File)
Iran’s Coronavirus crisis has drawn nearer to the Supreme Leader, with his top foreign policy aide testing positive for the illness.
Ali Akbar Velayati, Foreign Minister from 1981 to 1997 and a Presidential candidate in 2013, is in quarantine at his home.
A spokesman for Tehran’s Masih Daneshvari Hospital, where the 75-year-old Velayati is President, said the Supreme Leader’s advisor “experienced mild symptoms”. Officials said he is “improving” after contracting the virus while working with hospital staff.
Velayati played a key role in downplaying the virus even as it spread through the Islamic Republic.
On February 24, a day after the Supreme Leader derided fear of Coronavirus as a “Western plot” to depress turnout in Iran’s Parliamentary elections, Velayati told State TV that the outbreak was no more threatening than flu.
He assured, “Thank God, the Islamic Republic, its Ministry of Health, and medical and educational centers have succeeded in defeating coronavirus. Inshallah, coronavirus’ curve will soon flatten, and it will be totally contained.”
An aide to the Supreme Leader, Mohammad Javad Iravani, and the brother of Ayatollah Khamenei’s daughter-in-law have tested positive. Two members of the Expediency Council, advising Khamenei, have died.
The Health Ministry raised the official toll on Thursday to 429 deaths among 10,075 cases.
Among the deaths are two MPs, an advisor to Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, and Iran’s former Ambassador to the Vatican. First Vice President Esh’aq Jahangiri, Vice President Masoumeh Ebtekar, two other Ministers, and five MPS are among the ill.
Supreme Leader Orders Military Base to Coordinate Effort
Khamenei issued a decree on Friday for the Iranian military to establish a “Health and Treatment Base”.
The Supreme Leader said the base should organize treatment with medical centers, field hospitals, and places of quarantine. The armed forced should also seek prevent the spread of Coronavirus “using the necessary methods”.
He directed the military to coordinate with the Health Ministry and the Government.
The Revolutionary Guards have sought a higher profile in the Coronavirus effort, setting up checkpoints to limit travel, putting vehicles on the street, and declaring the mobilization of 100,000 Guards and Basij paramilitaries.
See also Iran Daily, March 2: Revolutionary Guards Base to Fight Coronavirus with Water Cannons
Khamenei continued to seek political advantage against the “enemy” from the crisis, insisting that the outbreak is a “biological attack”.
Revolutionary Guards commander Maj. Gen. Hossein Salami used similar language last week: “We will win the battle against this virus which might be the result of a biological offensive that has first reached China and Iran and other regions.”
See also Iran Daily, March 6: Revolutionary Guards — Coronavirus May Be “Western Biological Warfare”
“Khamenei issued a decree on Friday for the Iranian military to establish a “Health and Treatment Base”.”
And what that treatment would look like, what is the excat medical experty of irgc and basij thugs?
They could not hold a simple funeral for the stray dog soleimani without crushing their idiots in streets…