UK presses US to ease Iran sanctions to help fight coronavirus

Tehran says 1,135 have died and experts fear true figure could be five times as high

The Guardian/ Patrick Wintour Diplomatic editor

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The UK is privately pressing the US to ease sanctions on Iran to help it fight the growing coronavirus outbreak.

Official figures published by the Iranian health ministry on Wednesday said 1,135 have so far died in Iran and 17,361 have been infected. A total of 147 were recorded as dying in the past 24 hours, a new daily record.

The Iranian embassy in London appealed for sanctions to be lifted and warned the country’s hospitals were badly overstretched.

The US insists it has offered to provide Iran with practical help through the World Health Organization, but the Iranians have rejected any help if it does not involve lifting US sanctions.

A World Health Organization official said he believed the Iranian health ministry figures underestimated the true numbers by a fifth – which would mean more than 5,600 people have died.

Researchers at the Sharif University of Technology in Tehran have created a computer simulation predicting as as many as 3.5 million deaths if Iran cannot get a grip on the crisis by the end of May. The projections show required measures to suppress the virus including social distancing, citywide quarantines and improved medical supplies.

The Trump administration has said medical supplies are available to Iran through a new Swiss humanitarian vehicle, but UK officials fear this involves so many conditions as to be ineffective. The US Department of State imposed sanctions on 12 new entities on Tuesday.

The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, said last week that “any nation considering humanitarian assistance to Iran should seek the release of all dual and foreign nationals” from Iranian prisons.

The UK has taken a less stringent approach not making the release of all its dual nationals a precondition for aid.

After lengthy talks Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, an Iranian-British dual national, was released on a two-week furlough on Tuesday, partly because of the coronavirus outbreak in Iranian jails. The Iranian government has released 85,000 prisoners so far, including half the political prisoners. In theory those sentenced to more than five years are not being released, but lists of released prisoners show some with longer sentences are being pardoned.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s husband, Richard Ratcliffe, urged the UK government to try to build on her release to form an improved bilateral relationship. He said in London after speaking to his wife twice since her release: “This is a global crisis that affects everyone.

“Fundamentally there is nothing like a crisis for actually reminding everyone of what is important and what is not. What it means is that some of the old disputes can be settled through humanitarian routes.”

Ratcliffe said: “It would make such a difference if the UK was to provide more medical, humanitarian and drug supplies to Iran.” He added that the coronavirus crisis, and the repeated Iranian request for external medical and financial help, “provided a very different context in which the two countries could operate”.

His wife’s release, a respite from five years of captivity, was discussed between the UK foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, and the Iranian foreign minister, Javad Zarif, on Monday. Foreign Office sources said the two men had also discussed what other forms of practical help the UK could provide Iran, as well as Iran’s failure to comply with the terms of the 2015 nuclear deal.

The Iranian embassy in London said in a statement: “The fight against such an epidemic crisis requires, however, the mobilisation of all resources at the national and international levels to ensure the benefit of all mankind. We need to work hand in hand to overcome the disease.

“In Iran, thousands are suffering from the virus and millions are self-quarantined, hospitals are overstretched as doctors and nurses and the whole health systems courageously and tirelessly trying in fullest capacity to serve the people.

“Iranian officials, however, since the inception of the national mobilisation to fight the virus in recent weeks, have been facing serious challenges. But above all, the US illegal unilateral sanctions have impeded the governmental and non-governmental institutions to ensure access of the people in need to all medical and health requirements in fighting coronavirus.”

Anyone seeking to trade via the recently established Swiss channel is required to receive a written undertaking from the US that they will not be sanctioned for sending medical supplies to Iran.

Iran has published a list of the supplies that it lacks, and last Thursday formally asked the IMF for a $5bn (£4.6bn) loan. European sources said it looked as if the US may use its veto on the IMF board to block the loan, saying the request did not meet the fund’s criteria. It is the first time Iran has made such a request to the IMF.

In a letter to world leaders the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, said Europe and Iran were involved in the same struggle. “There is no doubt that in the face of a dangerous global epidemic, Tehran and Qom are not far from Paris, London and New York, and any policy that weakens the economic structure and medical system, and limits financial resources for crisis management, will have direct effects on the fight against the epidemic in other countries,” he wrote.

The Trump administration believes the Iranians are using sanctions as an excuse to hide their own incompetence, including a reluctance to take the necessary tough measures to restrict population movements. It is also furious at what it regards as continued Iranian-inspired missile attacks on foreign military bases in Iraq.

Rouhani on Wednesday defended his government’s record, saying: “Some ask why the government isn’t intervening, but I think we have intervened significantly. Great things have been done [including] measures no other country has taken.” The government has closed schools and shrines, but the government has balked at a full lockdown.

Reformist newspapers such as Etemad have criticised the lack of consistency in the government response, the lack of a single spokesperson, and the loss of trust between the government and the people.

Iran says it is struggling to replenish medicine and medical equipment not just because of sanctions but also because of supply chain disruptions related to border closures.

Topics:Iran/Coronavirus outbreak/Middle East and North Africa/Foreign policy/US foreign policy/news