The coronavirus epidemic is not giving Arab and Muslim countries a pass. One need only look at what is unfolding in Iran – where according to figures from the regime over 35,000 people have contracted the virus, with over 2,500 dead.
However, the conventional wisdom is that the corona death toll in Iran is actually much higher and that the government is not revealing the true state of the epidemic because it fears a popular response of chaos and anarchy that could destabilize the regime.
In effect it could be said that fear for the stability of their governments is a common thread among all Middle East regimes that shapes how they are responding to the epidemic, and at a time when most Arab states are still scarred from the events of the Arab Spring in 2011.
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It is no coincidence that director of the World Health Organization for the Eastern Mediterranean, Dr. Ahmed Al-Mandhari, has said that Arab states are supplying insufficient information about the number of coronavirus cases and the extent of its spread in their countries.
According to Al-Mandhari, the information available indicates contradictory numbers, whereas the countries are adopting different and irresponsible methods of trying to check the spread of the epidemic within their borders.
The government's fears about how an outbreak would affect their stability prompted them to delay their responses to the epidemic. In Lebanon, for example, inbound flights from China, Iran, and Italy were suspended only on March 11, which caused the public to prickle and even point an accusing finger at Hezbollah as acting in accordance with dictates from Tehran.
In Syria, where a civil war is still raging, only in the past few days has the regime declared a lockdown and even a total curfew in some provinces after health authorities reported the first corona case. Jordan has taken the necessary steps of shutting its borders, declaring a lockdown and curfew, and deploying soldiers at the entry and exit point to the capital, Amman, and other major cities.
The healthcare systems in Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, the Palestinian Authority, and other Arab countries in the Middle East are shaky and suffer a serious shortage of medical supplies and equipment, such as ventilators, testing kits, and vital medicine for the treatment of corona patients.
If the healthcare system and the economies there collapse entirely as a result of a major outbreak, the people will take to the streets en masse, demanding that the leaders be deposed. High-ranking government officials in some Arab states have already started claiming that coronavirus is an "American-Zionist imperialist conspiracy." A few thousand protesters in Egypt, Jordan, and other countries have even begun demonstrating against the "American-Zionist corona conspiracy."
The more the corona epidemic spreads throughout Arab states and the more their people sicken and die, we will see a starker difference between the wealthy Gulf State emirates – which can afford massive acquisition of ventilators, testing kits, and medicine – and the failing Arab states whose health care system has many shortcomings. Moreover, the Gulf states are pointing their finger at Iran as the entity responsible for the epidemic in Arab countries as a result of the ayatollah regime's lax handling of the outbreak and attempts to hide the true data about it.
Meanwhile, some think that the coronavirus pandemic will bring an end to the violent conflicts in the Middle East, even the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – the latter, thanks to close cooperation between Israel and the PA, as well as Jordan and Egypt, in attempts to stop the spread of the virus from one country to another, which has led to a drastic drop in security incidents on the borders.
