Free Republic

Roughly 10% of the members on Iran’s parliament have contracted the coronavirus. Iranian state media reported on Tuesday that 23 lawmakers have tested positive for the mysterious illness, according to USA Today. The head of Iran’s emergency services has also been infected, as has the country's health minister and a vice president who was the spokeswoman of the 1979 hostage crisis. The virus has killed a close adviser to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country's former ambassador to the Vatican, and a member of parliament. Many of Iran’s top officials contracted the illness while foreign governments accused the...

Tehran dismisses US offer of aid, accusing Washington of trying to weaken Iranians’ spirits over outbreak TEHRAN, Iran — A member of a council that advises Iran’s supreme leader died Monday after falling sick from the new coronavirus, state radio reported, becoming the first top official to succumb to the illness that has affected several members of the Islamic Republic’s leadership. Expediency Council member Mohammad Mirmohammadi died at a Tehran hospital of the virus, state radio said. He was 71. The council advises Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as well as settles disputes between the supreme leader and parliament.

In early January the United States killed General Qassim Soleimani, a top commander of Iran’s al-Quds Force, in an airstrike at Baghdad’s International Airport. The strike also killed Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy commander of Iran-backed militias known as the Popular Mobilization Forces. Seven people were reportedly killed in the airstrike. Following the death of Commander Soleimani Democrat Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) lashed out at President Trump for assassinating the Iranian al-Quds terrorist leader who was responsible for the deaths and maiming of HUNDREDS of US soldiers. It soon became apparent why Murphy was sooo upset with Soleimani’s death. Senator...

Picture the following sacred but unhygienic scene: Pilgrims from a dozen countries converge on one small city. They stay in cramped hotels, using communal toilets and eating meals together. For their main ritual, they converge on the tomb of a woman, the sister of a holy man, and as they get closer, they feel with rising intensity grief over her death and the deaths of her kin. The grief is a commandment: Each tear, according to one tradition, will be transformed in the afterlife into a pearl, and an angel will compensate them for their tears with a bucket of...

Iran’s former ambassador to the Vatican and prominent cleric Hadi Khosrowshahi died of coronavirus, local media reported on Thursday, Anadolu Agency reports. According to the semiofficial Tasnim News Agency, the 81-year-old cleric died at a hospital in Iran. Earlier in the day, Iran put the death toll in the country from the coronavirus to 26, with 245 confirmed cases. The global death toll is nearly 2,800, and China, where the outbreak originated, is the worst hit, with more than 78,000 cases and over 2,700 fatalities.

Despite the ban, #MahanAir refuses to stop flights to #China due to financial benefit of #IRGC and #Marashi family who own the airline. Flight W578 of #Mahan with EP-MMR, an Airbus A340-642 is now returning from Beijing to Tehran with 300 Iranian & Chinese tourists on-board!

Iran's deputy health minister has tested positive for coronavirus as the crisis deepened in the Islamic republic today. Iraj Harirchi was taken into quarantine just a day after sweating heavily at a press conference where he insisted that the outbreak was not as bad as feared. The virus's spread into the health ministry is the latest sign of Tehran's faltering efforts to contain the outbreak as the official death toll rose to 15 today. The regime has refused to seal off the holy city of Qom at the centre of the crisis even as pilgrims spread the virus around the...

<....................................................SNIP........................................................> Iranian President Hassan Rouhani scolded citizens for rumor-mongering and spreading false information about the virus. About an hour later, it was revealed that Iran's deputy health minister had tested positive for the virus.

The coronavirus outbreak showed dangerous signs of breaking out beyond China on Friday, as new cases were reported in the Middle East and large clusters emerged around Asia. Countries were closing their borders with Iran as health officials scrambled to make sense of reports out of Tehran suggesting that the virus was being transmitted more widely than officials there have publicly acknowledged. As recently as Tuesday, Iranian officials had said there were no cases of the virus in the country. By Friday, however, they acknowledged 18 cases in three cities, with four deaths... At the same time, a surge in...