Iran finally shuts religious shrines, amid angry protest

WASHINGTON DC (Kurdistan 24) – Iranian authorities closed four major Shia shrines on Monday, prompting demonstrations against the decision, which is meant to limit the spread of the highly contagious coronavirus disease.

In two sites – the Imam Reza shrine in Mashhad, in the country’s northeast, and the Fatima Masoumeh shrine in Qom, some 80 miles south of Tehran – angry crowds stormed their way into the courtyards.

In Mashhad, one Shia cleric shouted, “We are here to say that Tehran is damn wrong to do this,” while others chanted, “The health minister is damn wrong to do this. The president is damn wrong to do this,” Time magazine reported on Tuesday.

In Qom, protestors clashed with police, who arrested 11 of them.

Iran’s Coronavirus Crisis

Iran has the world’s third-largest number of reported cases, and deaths, from the new disease. More of its leadership has been infected by the coronavirus than that of any other country.

A week ago, The Washington Post reported that the Iranian government had begun digging long trenches to serve as mass graves for coronavirus deaths. The excavation of the two trenches at Qom’s Behesht-e Masoumeh cemetery began already on Feb. 21, the Post stated.

Iran officially denied the Post report, but burials have been conducted there by men wearing protective clothing, as seen in videos posted on social media.

Because of its close ties to China, Iran has become the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in the Middle East, and the epicenter of the virus within Iran was Qom, although the disease has now spread to all of Iran’s 31 provinces.

“Roughly nine out of 10 of the over 17,000 cases of the new virus confirmed across the Middle East come from Iran,” the Associated Press reported on Tuesday.

Moreover, it is widely believed that the number of coronavirus cases in Iran is underreported because of a lack of technical capacity and for political reasons. The World Health Organization (WHO) has said the real toll could well be five times higher than the 988 deaths and 16,000 cases that Tehran officially claims.

“Realistically, at this point, you need to change the reported sick cases to one million,” a doctor in Tehran, involved in treating coronavirus patients, told Time.

Slow to respond to initial outbreak

The Iranian leadership has been slow to respond to the coronavirus crisis—as have other leaders, including in the United States and the United Kingdom. Yet Iran has been even slower, allowing the disease to reach far greater dimensions.

The best way to stop the spread of the disease, as China’s experience has shown, is to isolate people. Stop human contacts, particularly large-scale gatherings.

Western countries have watched in horror the experience of northern Italy, where that country’s coronavirus first appeared. Italy is a wealthy European country, with an advanced health care system, particularly in the north.

Northern Italy’s first coronavirus case appeared on Feb. 14. It took a week before doctors recognized the disease. And now, just a month later, it has reached crisis proportions. Hospitals are taxed beyond their capabilities. Not everyone who is sick can be treated. Patients are being triaged. Those who are the worst off are left to die, while those receiving treatment still spill out into the hallways.

Coronavirus is highly contagious, and it spreads exponentially. One person infects, on average, two to three people, who each will go on to infect two to three more unless something stops the chain of transmission.

Italy was also slow to respond to its crisis. Political figures in the north initially rejected public health measures, like quarantines, because they are disruptive, and people do not like them. Yet now they have paid the price.

Iran’s Evolving Policy

Tehran long resisted trying to restrict people’s movements, including closing the major Shia shrines. Yet on Monday, Iran announced it was closing the two shrines mentioned above, as well as Tehran’s Shah-Abdol Azim shrine and the Jamkaran Mosque, on the outskirts of Qom.

The change in Tehran’s stance, almost certainly, reflects the visit last week of a WHO technical support mission. Another facet of Iran’s new policy is to try to impress on the population the consequences of not following its direction.

Speaking on Iranian state television, Afruz Eslami, a journalist, who is also a medical doctor, discussed the results of a study from Tehran’s Sharif University of Technology.

Eslami stated that if Iranians fully follow the government’s directions, some 12,000 people will die, and the crisis will reach its peak in early April. If they do not cooperate, the peak will occur in June, and some 3.5 million people will likely die.

Editing by Karzan Sulaivany