Coronavirus: an increasingly isolated Iran tries to control crisis
- With economy battered by sanctions, country’s currency slumps to lowest level in a year, as outbreak kills 26 people, the highest toll outside China
- Slamming ‘foreign propaganda’, President Hassan Rowhani seeks to portray crisis in terms of Iran’s tense relationship with US
Iran is girding itself for a long battle against the coronavirus that is spreading rapidly across the country – even on Thursday infecting vice-president Masoumeh Ebtekar – though officials in the Islamic republic had earlier minimised the outbreak that has now killed 26 people, the highest toll outside China.
President Hassan Rowhani said there were no immediate plans to quarantine cities, but he acknowledged it may take “one, two or three weeks” to get control of the virus in Iran, which has been linked to most of the over 200 confirmed cases in the region.
As Iran’s 80 million people find themselves increasingly isolated in the region by the outbreak, the country’s sanctions-battered economy saw its currency slump to its lowest level against the US dollar in a year.
Rowhani sought to portray the virus crisis in terms of Iran’s tense relationship with the US, which under President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from its nuclear deal with world powers and sent its economy into free fall.
“We must not let the United States attach a new virus to the coronavirus by stopping our social activities through tremendous fear. This is a conspiracy we see today and you see in foreign propaganda,” Rowhani said at a Cabinet meeting, according to a transcript on the presidency’s website.