My Take | End Iran sanctions in the time of coronavirus

Global media is focused on the Covid-19 pandemic in the Western world. But while those countries face tremendous hardships, they are comparatively rich and resourceful. And their experiences do not remotely approach the true horrors the disease has inflicted on the Iranian people.

While Western media initially fixated on the ineptitude and inadequacies of the Iranian leadership in its response to the outbreak, it has since lost interest. In other words, once the political point has been made against their leaders, the suffering of the people hardly warrants major news coverage.

This has tremendous consequences in that it has allowed the United States to escape criticism for not only continuing, but also expanding, its deadly sanctions against the Iranian regime and its people, at a time when they are already in a life-and-death struggle on a daily basis.

As Seyed Reza Hosseini, Tehran’s acting consul general in Hong Kong and Macau, told the Post, the unilateral US sanctions are stopping vital medical supplies from reaching his country.

Though medicine, medical devices, food and other humanitarian supplies are supposedly exempt from sanctions, US bureaucracy and politics have made it difficult for companies and countries to work through the system. Many just couldn’t be bothered to risk being sanctioned themselves for helping Iran.

This is not just an Iranian claim, but a finding by international rights groups such as Human Rights Watch.