Never discount the importance of venality in international relations. While pandemics should provide the glue for a
unified front in response – we keep being told of fighting this horrendous “invisible enemy” – it’s business as usual in
other respects. The United States, with a disparate, confused medical system that risks being overwhelmed, remains
committed against that other country floundering in efforts to combat COVID-19: Iran. Instead of binding the nations,
the virus, as with everything else, has served as a political obstacle.
This has led to a few glaring oddities. The first lies on the policy approach to US-led sanctions, which continues with
usual viciousness. Last week, the US State Department added nine new entities and three individuals to the sanctions
list against Iran. According to the press statement, “The actions of these individuals and entities provide revenue to the regime that it may use to fund terror and other
destabilizing activities, such as the recent rocket attacks on Iraqi and Coalition forces located at Camp Taji in Iraq.”
The aim here was to “deprive the regime of critical income from its petrochemical industry and further Iran’s economic
and diplomatic isolation.”
The Trump administration has insisted on pursuing the Iranian bogeyman with an enthusiasm verging on mania. Its attempts
to scuttle Tehran’s 2015 nuclear agreement with six world powers has, to a certain extent, been successful. This has
merely added gusto to Tehran’s defiance. The US has also sought to impress the Iranian armed forces that their influence
in the Middle East remains on notice: the killing of Major General Qassem Soleimani of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary
Guards Coprs was sharp, bloody and bankrupt in terms of strategy.
The coronavirus outbreak may well be seen as offering other opportunities to bring Iran to its knees. The desiccated
tacticians are out with their spread sheets and tables wondering what will be most effective approach. The sanctions, as
they tend to, have targeted the vulnerable, though never touch the well-heeled. The health system has suffered;
shortages in equipment and medicines are savagely biting. A team of researchers at Sharif University of Technology in
Tehran have concluded, using simulations, that 3.5 million deaths might eventuate in Iran if the crisis persists at its current momentum till
May. A truly horrendous toll that, should it eventuate, would not necessarily give Washington what it wants: submission
and regime change.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has insisted on conditions to any state wishing to offer humanitarian assistance to
Iran. The “release of all dual and foreign nationals” is a primary condition. A cumbersome, red-tape Swiss channel has
also been established to facilitate trade with Iran, but US oversight makes the option ungainly.
Amidst the tangle have come small offers of assistance from Washington; first the brutal slap, then the promise of
miniscule relief. Scepticism was forthcoming. What was the Great Satan playing at? “Several times Americans have offered
to help us to fight the pandemic,” assessed a sceptical Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a televised address over the weekend. “That is strange because you face shortages
in America.”
Iran’s supreme leader had an explanation. Using the conspiratorial language that President Donald Trump has made
ritualistic and famous, he claimed, that the virus was “specifically built for Iran using the genetic data of Iranians which they have obtained through
different means.” He also retorted with the Chinese thesis on the subject. “Also, you are accused of creating this
virus.” To accept medicines from the US might assist in spreading “the virus or cause it to remain permanently.”
The continued sanctions regime despite the crippling effect of COVID-19 has prompted calls for an easing, if not lifting
altogether. China has taken the lead on the issue, and the international relations cognoscenti sense a pronounced step
in the virus propaganda war. Its Foreign Ministry has urged the US to, in the words of spokesman Geng Shuang, “immediately lift unilateral sanctions on Iran. Continued sanctions are against humanitarianism and hamper
Iran’s epidemic response and delivery of humanitarian aid.”
Russia has also added its voice of support, with its Foreign Ministry arguing that, “Illegal unilateral US sanctions, imposed since May 2018 as part of
the ‘maximum pressure’ campaign, are a powerful obstacle to the effective fight against the infection.”
One firm US ally might also be softening its stance. The case of the Iranian-British dual national Nazanin
Zaghari-Ratcliffe has seen prospects for an easing of pressure. Her release from Iranian captivity, a period lasting five years, was a topic of discussion between UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab and his counterpart
Javad Zarif last week. Options pertaining to practical help for Iran were also discussed.
Even within US political circles, the Trump administration’s insistence on politicising aid is proving worrying. “We
should never be conditioning humanitarian aid,” opined Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) to the National Interest. “We need to be engaged in the world, providing the leadership, and solving the pandemic, and giving help to countries
that need it.” The good member of Congress might also consider that leadership also entails sorting out the domestic
front before sending in the cavalry of rescue. A country short of respirators, masks and beds would be a poor contender
for that role.
Azadeh Moaveni of the International Crisis Group, and human rights advocate Sussan Tahmasebi, founder of Femena, argue that suspending the sanctions regime during the course of the COVID-19 outbreak “should not be seen as a troubling or
even monumental thing to do.” To control the virus should not be deemed a favour to the Iranian regime but more for
Iranians “and indeed, to the rest of the world.” That would entail, almost impossibly, abandoning the temptations of
Realpolitik and the urgings of insensible patriotism.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at SelwynCollege, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.
Email: bkampmark@gmail.com