Free Republic

Former national security adviser John Bolton is joining mounting calls for the director of the World Health Organization to resign, calling him an “accomplice to China’s massive coverup” as the world grapples with the coronavirus pandemic. World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has faced calls for his resignation from American politicians and others who link the group to China’s lack of transparency regarding the severity of COVID-19. “The @WHO is an accomplice to China’s massive coverup of Covid19,” Bolton tweeted late Monday. “That’s why I support efforts by @marcorubio & @tedcruz pushing for resignation of WHO director general.”

...But the regime does seem to care about prisoners. In recent days there have been several prison breakouts — five of them, according to dissident reports -- in widely separate locations. Why all of a sudden are Iranian jails so flimsy? Most theories reject the fanciful hypothesis that the regime has gone soft on those incarcerated; most of the explanations have to do with the virus epidemic. The conditions for the prisoners are atrocious, and they know that at any moment their execution may be ordered. Indeed, that would be the “normal” method of dealing with unrest in the prisons....

Iran's Revolutionary Guard has been restructuring its military capabilities and taking an increasingly prominent role in the nation's political life as the United States builds political and military pressure on the Islamic republic. A number of former commanders have assumed political positions or become involved in shaping foreign policy, even as the military force -- known formally as the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) -- prepares itself for "asymmetrical warfare" and the possibility of internal unrest. On Feb. 21, the overall commander of the IRGC declared that the United States was not able to make any security changes in the...