Is this time the time? Will the spread of the coronavirus in Iran succeed where over a decade of protests have failed? As always, the answer is it's impossible to tell.
The initial response to the virus was arrogant and cavalier. It took Iran three weeks and 55 flights more than the rest of the world to sever contact with China. We all remember Iran's deputy health minister, Iraj Harirchi, declaring at a press conference that the panic over the coronavirus was inappropriate.
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When the very next day Harirchi announced he had contracted the virus, the reactions on social media -- beyond those wishing him a quick death and some wishing him a speedy recovery -- raised doubts that he was even ill, and that at the very least he would recover within days and show that the virus was nothing to worry about.
While he did recover, this theory was apparently quite wrong, because at least 12 senior Iranians have already succumbed to the virus and another 43 have been infected. In a regime where most of the senior leadership consists of men who smoke and are over the age of 60 (in fact, just one minister was born after the 1979 revolution), it isn't surprising that the Islamic republic started responding to the virus too late. The official figures are startling -- but according to the rumor mill the actual numbers are far higher. Some Iranian lawmakers are also questioning the Iranian health ministry's credibility regarding its official numbers. Although the Majlis (Iran's parliament) has been suspended, some representatives have communicated through various channels that the numbers of infected and dead are far larger than the official figures.
On social media, medics, doctors and nurses are reporting hundreds of patients in every hospital. According to the news sites, even regime mouthpieces, hospitals are already beyond the point of collapse. Opposition websites are reporting tens of thousands of people dead, but we should note that they, too, are biased. The true numbers are likely somewhere in between.
There's no need to officially cancel Iran's new year festivities. The Nowruz celebrations, which begin March 20th and continue for 13 days of mutual house gathering and parties, apparently won't be held this year because people aren't leaving their homes. The second round of parliamentary elections, which was supposed to take place in April, will likely be postponed until August-September. In Isfahan they have started manufacturing medical masks, and by Nowruz, regime officials have promised us, Iranian-made testing kits will be ready for use.
In the meantime, we are seeing on the one hand ghost cities, a sharp rise in the sales of disinfectants, and around 70 people who were hospitalized after drinking industrial-grade alcohol to disinfect their bodies from the inside; and on the other side audacious youngsters who are licking the stones at holy sites to affirm their belief that Islam will save them from the coronavirus (what's apparently saving them is their age).
So are we closer than ever to a regime change? Indeed, people aren't leaving their homes now, not even to buy milk, and god knows how many senior officials will survive this pandemic or how mistrust of the regime has seeped into the minds of even its traditional supporters, those who lost quite a bit of faith in the regime after the Ukranian airline disaster. In short, we are one day closer than yesterday.
