Iranian officials are invoking the coronavirus pandemic to demand Western aid and the easing of U.S. sanctions imposed on the regime’s nuclear program.
“Iranian care personnel are courageously battling #COVID19 on frontlines,” Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif tweeted Thursday. “Their efforts are stymied by vast shortages caused by restrictions on our people’s access to medicine/equipment.”
Zarif’s pleas come one day after an Iran-backed militia killed two American troops and one British service member in Iraq.
“You don’t get to shoot at our bases and kill and wound Americans and get away with it,” Defense Secretary Mark Esper told reporters Thursday. “We’re going to hold those persons accountable.”
Zarif wants the International Monetary Fund to provide $5 billion in coronavirus aid to the regime’s Central Bank, which the Treasury Department sanctioned in September for financing terrorism. U.S. officials oppose the aid request in light of Iran’s continued detention of American political prisoners, where the virus reportedly has spread.
“Any nation considering whether to provide Iran with humanitarian assistance because of COVID-19 should seek a reciprocal humanitarian gesture by the regime: release all wrongly detained dual and foreign national citizens,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Tuesday.
Zarif complained in a Thursday letter to United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres that President Trump’s administration has “set some preconditions” on humanitarian aid, according to state-run media, in an apparent reference to Pompeo’s position.
“IMF/IMF Board should adhere to fund’s mandate, stand on right side of history and act responsibly,” the foreign minister insisted.
Iran last received IMF aid in 1962 — seventeen years before the revolution that brought the theocratic regime to power and forced a break in U.S. relations with Tehran.
Zarif’s complaint about Pompeo also comes just days after the 13th anniversary of the disappearance of Bob Levinson, a retired FBI agent believed to be detained in Iran.
“The Iranian regime recently released 70,000 prisoners due to the outbreak of COVID-19, demonstrating its ability to grant clemency and show mercy,” Pompeo said. “Yet it continues to unjustly detain several American citizens, without cause or justification.”
