{"id":7745,"date":"2020-03-25T17:07:25","date_gmt":"2020-03-25T14:07:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/?p=7745"},"modified":"2020-03-25T17:07:27","modified_gmt":"2020-03-25T14:07:27","slug":"covid-19-widens-the-trust-deficit-between-the-people-and-the-government","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/monitoring-and-translation\/reports\/covid-19-widens-the-trust-deficit-between-the-people-and-the-government\/","title":{"rendered":"COVID-19 Widens the Trust Deficit Between the People and the Government"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On February 19, Iran confirmed its first cases of the\nCOVID-19 virus. According to the government\u2019s data less than 2,000 people had\nbeen infected. However, doubts arose when reports<\/a> emerged of the\ngovernment covering-up cases and deaths. Charged with mismanagement<\/a> and ignorance<\/a>\nabout COVID-19 which officials labeled a fake disease<\/a>, Iran\u2019s government\nis in crisis and is eager to avert a political disaster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before COVID-19, deadly flood<\/a> cycles and deteriorating\nsocio-economic conditions had led to popular uprisings<\/a> against the political\nsystem in the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Public frustration has increased after the coronavirus\noutbreak, forcing Iran\u2019s Health Ministry to admit to delays in responding to COVID-19<\/a>.\nBut despite calls to halt flights from China, the government ignored this plea\nfor several weeks. Iranians have refused to send their children outdoors,\nforcing schools to shut down across the country. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also, public pressure has forced shrines<\/a> to be closed but conservative\nFriday Prayer Imams have resisted the decision. The Supreme Leader Ayatollah\nAli Khamenei inviting Iranians to read the Shia<\/a> seventh-sahifa prayers,\nAyatollah Vahid Khorasani advising the public to chant Quranic verses, and\nother clerics insisting on traditional medicine to fight COVID-19, have led the\npublic to believe that the government is using religious superstition to hide\nits own mishandling of the coronavirus threat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Major shrines including the Imam Reza<\/a> shrine eventually\nclosed. Some Iranians broke into shrines after the shutdown<\/a>,\nleading conservative mouthpieces to argue that the people opposed the\ngovernment\u2019s decision. This conservative opposition triggered Iranians to\nquestion whether the government wanted to keep shrines open to appease the masses,<\/a>\nor to collect pilgrimage<\/a>\ndues to finance its regional plans. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The rapid spread of COVID-19 has led the government to take\na number of measures, such as restricting public movement and encouraging\npeople to stay away from public places. \nIn truth, the government\u2019s measures seem to be driven by security rather\nthan health concerns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Iran\u2019s army<\/a> has started biological defense<\/a>\nmaneuvers under the umbrella of the National Committee to Fight Corona.<\/a>\nThe committee has claimed to have set up 300 rapid deployment field hospitals\nand monitors checkpoints across the country. This measure can help the\ngovernment to launch mass arrests in case people protest. The Islamic\nRevolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)<\/a> says it dispatched\nmedical and security forces to support the committee\u2019s measures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The aforementioned measures were taken despite warnings by health\nofficials<\/a> to enforce quarantines. President Hassan\nRouhani dismissed the idea and called city-wide quarantines an archaic<\/a> concept that never\nworks. But Tehran\u2019s population<\/a>\ndensity of nearly 10 million increases the likelihood of the virus spreading\nquickly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is no doubt that the virus poses a system-wide political<\/a> threat to the\npolitical system. Iranians have increasingly turned to external sources to\nlearn about the real impact of the virus because civil society<\/a> groups are\nsilenced. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The government responds by blaming outsiders for the\noutbreak of the virus in the country. The IRGC and government figures<\/a> suggest that COVID-19\ncould be a US-<\/a>designed\nform of biological  warfare<\/a> and a plot<\/a>\nto increase Iran\u2019s political and economic isolation<\/a>, which government critics<\/a>\ncall delusional. To draw attention to Iran\u2019s blame game, foreign leaders\nincluding Saudi Arabia\u2019s King Salman<\/a> and US Secretary of\nState Mike Pompeo<\/a> have pointed to\nTehran\u2019s mishandling of the coronavirus outbreak leading it to rapidly spread\ninside Iran as well as across the region in the Gulf<\/a> and the Middle East<\/a> including Turkey<\/a>, and Central Asia<\/a>. The virus has\nforced a 35 percent drop in Iran\u2019s exports, as a result of 11 of its concerned\nneighbors closing land and air borders with Tehran.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To absorb this economic<\/a> cost, the IRGC says it\nwill generate employment<\/a> and support the bazaar,<\/a> usually a hotbed for\nsocial upheavals in Iran. But critics predict that Iran\u2019s post-coronavirus\neconomy will be crippled, and the schism between the people<\/a> and the government will\nincrease. More importantly, fewer Iranians will accept the government\u2019s\nconspiracy theories of blaming foreigners for the outbreak and the spread of\nthe virus in the country. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On February 19, Iran confirmed its first cases of the COVID-19 virus. According to the government\u2019s data less than 2,000 people had been infected. However, doubts arose when reports emerged of the government covering-up cases and deaths. Charged with mismanagement and ignorance about COVID-19 which officials labeled a fake disease, Iran\u2019s government is in crisis […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":7746,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[4446],"class_list":["post-7745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reports","tag-covid-19"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7745"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7745\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7747,"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7745\/revisions\/7747"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}