The the clerical regime in Tehran is in the midst of an international propaganda campaign against the United States, the aim of which to pressure the Trump Administration in to alleviating its crippling sanctions regime against the Islamic Republic over claims that those sanction impede Tehran’s capacity to control the spread of the coronavirus. The virus has thus far claimed the lives of more than 2,000 Iranian nationals.
And while the United States has repeatedly offered Iran humanitarian assistance to alleviate the dire consequences of the coronavirus, the Iranian leadership continues to refuse all American aid offers.
According to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, “The sanctions that are cruel, illegal and terroristic have been implemented on the Iranian people by America, and unfortunately other countries have been overcome to comply because they are scared of America’s punishment. This has created a very big problem for us. In that America says, ‘we are prepared to help Iran with the corona(virus) situation’, it is the biggest lie in history.”
Despite the continued terror-related activities by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, which claimed the lives of two American and one British servicemembers earlier this month, the European Union announced that it will grant the Islamic Republic a 20 million Euros of humanitarian aid last week.
EU Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell stated that “We specifically have been talking about the situation in Iran, the second most hit country in the world, where the situation is becoming dramatic. We need to continue providing humanitarian aid to Iran. ‘Continue,’ it’s a way of saying because by the time being, we have been not very much able to provide a lot of humanitarian help – but there are in the pipeline some 20 million euros of humanitarian help that we expect to be delivered in the next weeks.”
While some European Union member states are struggling with the spread of the contagion, the EU Foreign Policy Chief – who evidently adopted the Iranian narrative – stressed that Brussels is going to financially support 70 nations that had requested assistance, including Iran and Venezuela, saying “And also we agreed on supporting the request by Iran and also by Venezuela to the International Monetary Fund in order to have financial support. Seventy countries have been asking for this financial support, Iran and Venezuela among them, and we are going to support these requests because these countries are in a very difficult situation mainly due to the American sanctions that prevent them from having income by selling their oil.”