Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei said
Sunday his country would never accept any aid to fight the novel coronavirus
from arch-enemy and “charlatans” the United States, as Tehran announced 129 new
deaths. Speaking in a televised address, Khamenei charged in a message directed
at Washington: “No one trusts you. You are capable of bringing into our country
a drug that will keep the virus alive and prevent its eradication.”
Iran has been one of the countries worst hit by the COVID-19
illness along with Italy, Spain and China, and the latest fatalities raised the
official death toll to 1,685, the health ministry said. More than 1,028 new
cases in the past 24 hours meant a total of 21,638 people had now tested
positive for the virus, said ministry spokesman Kianouche Jahanpour. US
President Donald Trump — who has stepped up sanctions and a “maximum pressure”
campaign on Tehran over its nuclear programme — said on February 29 that
Washington was ready to help Iran fight the virus if its leaders requested it.
But Khamenei reiterated Iran’s rejection, charging that Washington, which whom
it has had no diplomatic relations for more than 40 years, was “capable” of
wanting to intensify the epidemic in the Islamic republic.
“Today America is our most ferocious and vicious enemy,”
Khamenei said in his address to the nation. “The American leaders are liars,
manipulators, impudent and greedy … They are charlatans,” he said, also
labelling them “absolutely ruthless” and “terrorists”. The American proposals
“to help us with medicines and treatments, provided we ask for them, are
strange”, he said, noting that the United States itself suffers from “a
horrible shortage not only of disease prevention equipment but also of
medicines”. Speaking to Washington, he added: “If you have something, use it
for yourself.”
Khamenei advised Iranians that “everyone should follow the
instructions” of the authorities to fight the epidemic “so that Almighty God
will put an end to this calamity for the Iranian people, for all Muslim nations
and for all mankind”. Jahanpour said Tehran province had reported 249 new cases
and the central province of Yazd, where 84 new patients had been counted,
“could become a new focus of the disease in the coming days”. To limit the
spread of the virus, the authorities have asked people to refrain from
travelling during the nation’s current New Year celebrations. In Iran “about 68
percent of deaths from COVID-19 disease are people over 60 years of age”,
Jahanpour said, stressing that family trips “are generally risk factors for
this age group”.
Iran has a population of some 81 million and the disease is
present in all 31 provinces. While it refuses to seek assistance from the American
“Great Satan”, the Islamic Republic has not closed the door to international
help. Iran said that by mid-March it had received medical equipment or
financial aid from Azerbaijan, Britain, China, France, Germany, Japan, Qatar,
Russia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. Aid group Doctors Without Borders
(MSF) announced Sunday it would send a 50-bed inflatable hospital and a
nine-person emergency team to Isfahan, Iran’s third largest city. “Iran is by
far the hardest hit country in the region and Isfahan is the second most
affected province in the country, and we hope that our aid will relieve, at
least in part, the pressure on the local health system,” said Julie
Reverse, MSF’s representative in Iran.
