State media attempts to "exonerate" Ayatollah Khamenei in the vaccine import crisis

As the death toll from the coronavirus in Iran increases due to Ali Khamenei's initial ban on the import of Western vaccines, media outlets close to the Iranian government have been trying to exonerate him and point to other culprits for the crisis in recent days.

Media outlets close to the Revolutionary Guards, especially Fars News Agency, have tried in recent days to interpret Ali Khamenei's order banning the entry of vaccines produced in the US and UK into Iran as meaning that he was only opposed to the import of vaccines from the US and UK, and not to vaccines produced by them.

Mehdi Fazaeli, a member of the Office of the Preservation and Publication of the Works of the Leader of the Islamic Republic, tweeted in this regard, claiming that the Leader of the Islamic Republic "has not banned any specific vaccine yet."

He wrote: "From the beginning, the Leader of the Revolution emphasized that purchasing vaccines was safe, and purchasing from the United States, England, and France was not considered safe for some reasons, and they do not know that at the same time, there was no prohibition on the same vaccines being produced in other countries."

Fars News Agency also claimed on Wednesday, citing an "informed source," that "the import of British, American, and French-branded coronavirus vaccines produced in another country has never been prohibited, and this issue was announced in an official letter from the Leader to government officials."

The Pfizer vaccine, which received emergency authorization from the US Food and Drug Administration in the fall of 2020, is a product of the German company BioNTech and the American pharmaceutical company Pfizer, which has a monopoly on it. The American vaccine "Moderna" also received emergency authorization for use last fall.

These two vaccines have the highest efficacy against the coronavirus and have also shown high effectiveness against mutated strains of the coronavirus.

The AstraZeneca vaccine is also offered by the University of Oxford and the AstraZeneca company, and most of its injections were in the United Kingdom in the early months of its market entry.

After Ali Khamenei banned the import of these vaccines into Iran, officials from the Islamic Republic's Ministry of Health announced that they were trying to import vaccines from other countries, the main ones being China's Sinopharm and Russia's Sputnik V. However, these two countries did not keep their promises and delivered fewer vaccines to Iran than they had promised.

Many analysts stated at the time that it seemed that the main reason for the ban on the import of American and British vaccines into Iran was the effort of the "Imam's Executive Order Headquarters" to produce the vaccine domestically and monopolize its market in the country.

This headquarters, which operates under the supervision of the Leader of the Islamic Republic, launched extensive propaganda about the widespread production of the Iranian Barakat vaccine, even promising to deliver 50 million doses of the vaccine by September of this year, and effectively prevented the widespread import of the vaccine into the country.

At the same time, various institutions of the Islamic Republic, especially those close to the Revolutionary Guard Corps, unveiled several "vaccines" that they said were going to be produced, but there is still no news about their status.

These turmoils caused the death toll from the coronavirus in the country to increase sharply over the past month, until the Leader of the Islamic Republic was finally forced to say on August 10 that the vaccine would be provided "by any means possible."

As the coronavirus crisis continues, some artists and political activists in Iran have called for Ayatollah Khamenei to be held accountable in recent days and weeks.

On August 12, renowned Iranian director Jafar Panahi sent a message demanding direct accountability from the Leader of the Islamic Republic for his decisions and statements regarding the coronavirus disease and the resulting crisis in the country.

On his Instagram page, Mr. Panahi posted parts of the Islamic Republic's Leader's speeches in the form of a short video, asking: "Isn't it time for them to answer for their contradictory statements for once, and is endangering the lives of the eighty-five million Iranian population and the deaths of hundreds of thousands worth answering for?"

Abolfazl Ghadiani, a political activist and figure in the Green Movement, also accused Ayatollah Khamenei of "turning the coronavirus into a weapon of war against the Iranian people."

Human rights activist Narges Mohammadi had previously pointed to the rising death toll from the coronavirus and the slow vaccination process in the country, blaming the Leader of the Republic for this.

In recent days, the record number of coronavirus victims in Iran has been broken several times due to the Delta strain epidemic, and Mohammad Reza Zafarghandi, head of the Iranian Medical System Organization, has emphasized that the actual number of coronavirus cases is higher than the official Ministry of Health figures, saying that those who "made statements to restrict the import of vaccines" should be held accountable.

The Revolutionary Guard-affiliated newspaper Javan admitted on September 1 that "the number of coronavirus deaths is seven times the official figure."

The newspaper published an interview with Kourosh Holakoui Naini, a professor of epidemiology at Tehran University of Medical Sciences, quoting him as saying: "According to what Iraj Harirchi said, the death toll should be increased by two and a half to three times, but I say you can increase the death toll by up to seven times."

He said that according to the statistics he has received from different regions of the country since the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak, he has realized that "in some regions we can increase the official statistics by up to seven times to reach the real figures, and in September of last year we had an estimate of 350,000 deaths."

Source: Radio Farda