Child Cancer Patients in Iran Dying in Droves Due to US Sanctions

Although US sanctions are killing people, where the corona virus has refrained from doing so, Trump et al have tried to blame the pandemic’s death toll in Iran on the Iranian government’s alleged incompetence and corruption.

US sanctions, which have taken on the country’s economy and hence the fight against COVID-19, amount to medical terrorism.

The US lecturing other nations about competence and corruption, with an outgoing president who has prescribed bleach as a cure for COVID-19, is hypocritical, to say the least.

‘Maximum pressure’ economic sanctions were bound to hit Iran’s economy and have contributed to a drastic currency devaluation and high inflation.

Far more COVID-19 cases have been reported in Iran than in neighboring states.

Dr. Hassan Abolghasmi, dean of Baqiyatallah University of Medical Sciences, a successful hospital in corona care, who also has in his care children with cancer, believes the virus should have been stopped from spreading during the Iranian New Year’s holidays.

Dr. Abolghasmi sees sanctions as a blessing as well as a curse. He takes pride in corona-related findings and advances in domestic medicine which were achieved specifically to survive America’s maximum pressure campaign.

The most common complication arising from COVID-19 is the lungs becoming severely engaged. Dr. Mostafa Ghanei, Chairman of the Scientific Committee, Coronavirus Combat Operations Headquarter, is a lung specialist and on the COVID-19 studies committee.

Meanwhile, around the world vaccine candidates of high efficacy are undergoing various stages of clinical trials prior to approval for mass inoculation.

Iran is also working on a promising vaccine of its own, however, it remains to be seen whether Iran will have a viable, working vaccine of sufficient efficacy soon enough.

Obviously, even if medicine were not already under sanctions, banking sanctions would have been enough to block Iran’s payment channels. Most countries, companies and banks fear that dealing with Iran would expose them to secondary US sanctions.

Sanctions have become an inseparable part of life to Iranians who have been isolated by for the past 40 years. The first serious blow came 10 years ago when nuclear-related economic UN sanctions were imposed on Iran.

In 2015 they were eased and were to be lifted in stages in compliance with the JCPOA or nuclear deal, in return for Iran limiting its peaceful nuclear program.

Sanctions had already cost Iran about $200 billion in revenue and helped devalue the currency by half in the past two years. That was before the virus emerged. And it was mainly down to decimated oil sales.

Modern day Iran after all has traditionally been an oil economy. So, the blow to the economy in the medium-term, especially while the country is struggling with a worldwide pandemic, should be obvious.