Iran's Mahan Air, which is funded and operated by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, has for years served the regime in a number of doubtful activities: money laundering, transporting terrorists and weapons, and flying home the bodies of IRGC fighters killed in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.
But according to a BBC report, in addition to these tasks for the ayatollahs, the airline has also played a major role in spreading coronavirus throughout the Middle East, even though Middle East leaders were aware of the growing pandemic.
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The BBC report said that Mahan Air planes continued to fly to various airports in cities including Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad, Abu Dhabi, Najaf, Karbala, and Sanaa even after governments announced they would be closing their airport facilities to prevent the spread of the virus.
The report said that Iran exerted its influence in these countries to pressure them to allow IRGC people to enter their borders. In addition, the report said, the airline's aircraft continued to fly back and forth to China, even after the Tehran regime announced a stop to air travel to China.
Hundreds of Mahan Air flights carrying tens of thousands of passengers departed from Iran, the Middle East nation with the highest number of corona cases, particularly Qom, whose Shiite holy sites were some of the main epicenters of the epidemic in the Islamic Republic. All this reportedly took place after the Iranian regime announced that the virus was spreading quickly within its borders.
The BBC also reported that Mahan Air officials admitted that many of its employees had continued to work even after contracting coronavirus. When a few crew members attempted to voice concerns about their colleagues' health, they were reportedly silenced by management.
According to official figures, nearly 100,000 people in Iran have contracted coronavirus, with a death toll of 6,340. However, international experts, including World Health Organization officials, believe that the actual number of confirmed cases and COVID-19 deaths in Iran is four or five times as many as the regime claims.
