Iran’s Covid-19 fatalities: excess deaths show serious undercounting
The question of accuracy of reported Covid-19 deaths is not news for most countries, but in the case of Iran it is because it has geopolitical significance. Iran’s foes are interested in it because the higher the number of deaths from Covid in Iran, the more likely Iranian leaders are to stop resisting US economic pressure. For others, who care more about the plight of ordinary Iranians, higher true fatalities signify a greater humanitarian cost of US sanctions. (more…)
Update on Iran’s Covid-19 epidemic
In a recent webinar at Harvard’s Middle East Initiative and a virtual conversation with Princeton’s Iran Center (here) I discussed the extent of the Covid-19 epidemic in Iran, and each time noted that, given the country’s high level of economic distress and the government’s tight budget, stay-at-home rules may not last very long. This has come to pass now. A few weeks ago the government relaxed the social distancing guidelines and, after a month of decline in the daily numbers of cases and deaths, both rates seem to be heading back up. (more…)
Making sense of Iran’s coronavirus statistics
Iran’s COVID-19 crisis has gotten lots of media attention because Iran was an early epicenter of the pandemic, and because of its geopolitical significance. The crisis has also intensified pressure on the Trump administration not to heed calls by former world leaders, former US diplomats, and influential newspaper editorials, to ease sanctions against Iran. For some proponents of regime change in Iran the epidemic is more than a human tragedy: it is also the proverbial straw that could break the camel’s back, which is why throwing some light on the intensity of the crisis is timely. (more…)
Tyranny of numbers 
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