“The situation in Iran is dire” as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. But in the short run Iran’s health crisis may strengthen the ruling ayatollahs’ grip on power, said Ilan Berman, senior vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council. In the long run, the effects of the illness could stimulate a shift in power, though not necessarily toward a less dictatorial regime.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s government claims approximately 4,500 to 5,000 Iranians have died from COVID-19, the disease associated with the novel coronavirus, and roughly 70,000 of the country’s 80 million people have been infected, Berman told a Jewish Policy Center conference call on April 22. But opposition sources estimated “as many as 500,000 people have been infected” and “fatalities at upwards of 30,000.”“Mass graves visible from space,” Berman said, suggest “there seems to be a large-scale regime cover-up” underway.
Berman is an expert on the Middle East and Russia. His analyses have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Foreign Affairs and elsewhere.
He said the Iranian government initially seized on the pandemic as a political opportunity rather than addressing it as a public health threat. Ruling clerical elites took a “cavalier” attitude toward social distancing, and delegated decision-making to lower-ranking clergy. The latter at first kept Shi’ite Islamic shrines open, including those in the holy city of Qom that “emerged as hot spots” of infection.
Iran announced a ban on flights to China, where the novel coronavirus first spread, on January 31. But Mahan Airlines—connected to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard  Corps—made more than 50 additional flights to Chinese destinations through late February, Berman noted.
Such political rather than public health choices highlight “the division between [Iran’s] younger, secular population and a clerical elite that seems to be out of touch,” he said.
Made in China
The ruling mullahs rely on their China connection, Berman added. “Over the years China has emerged as [Iran’s] economic lifeline” in the face of renewed “maximum pressure” trade and finance sanctions by the United States under the Trump administration. But the pandemic-caused global economic contraction and collapse of international oil markets, and “an almost seismic global shift away from [doing business with] China” might induce Beijing to get tougher on delinquent client states while Iran grows, even more, cash short, he said.
Initially dismissing the public health danger, Iran’s leaders “moved very rapidly” politically, Berman stated. They engaged in anti-American propaganda; bolstered the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the regime’s main tool of internal control and external subversion; and fanned conspiracy theories, including that the United States directed the virus against the Iranian people.
But as the effects of the pandemic become clearer inside the country, the political situation grows both fragile and potentially explosive, Berman said. Regime leadership is particularly vulnerable to COVID-19, he noted, since it is uniformly older, with many individuals in their 70s, 80s, and 90s.
“Khamenei is 80 and immuno-compromised,” he noted. “The Washington Post in early March reported two dozen members of the upper echelon had died,” Berman said, “with opposition groups saying more than 100 political and military leaders have died.”
In any case, the pandemic’s ravages inside Iran don’t support the argument current U.S. economic sanctions should be relaxed, he asserted. “Existing sanctions already have a carve out for humanitarian relief,” Berman noted. And Supreme Leader Khamenei reportedly controls asserts worth $200 billion, apparently none of which has been released to support public health in Iran.
The clerical regime has granted the IRGC “more power and status to deal wit

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