Persecuting its own people

d over 6000 new cases a day.

Iranians are trapped. They die when they’re in lockdown, and they die when they are allowed out. Late 2019 saw mass riots against a hike in the price of petrol, the last straw in a succession of economic blows for the people. The regime killed at least 180 people — and possibly hundreds more. It was the worst violence since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The Mullahs were scared; and they were right to be.

Coronavirus saved them from more mass protests and the increased killing that they would have required. But in truth they’ve merely been storing their problems up. One day the Iranian people will be let out: and they’ll be poorer and sicker and angrier than before. If you want to successfully cow a people, you must make them fear you; and you do this by threatening what they have and care about most. If you put them in a position that they no longer have anything to lose, eventually you will lose.

Logic then would dictate that Khamenei must grab onto any lifeline had can. But dictatorships don’t work on logic, or rather their logic is of the perverted sort. Considered this way: his decision makes perfect sense. The 'thin end of the wedge' is a cliché and therefore linguistically tired, but as a cliché it retains aphoristic value. Khamenei knows that the Islamic Republic can’t countenance any sort of détente with the West, when one of its key ideological justifications is resistance to the Great Satan and the 'pernicious influence' of Western culture. This means no western TV or fashion or sport, and definitely no western vaccine to solve a problem that your own negligence has made worse.

With Biden taking office shortly, Khamenei knows that the renewal of JCPOA, cancelled by Trump, is very much on the cards. So best to show your anti-western purity now, before any negotiations take place that might require some give and take. Abandoning the Iranian people to more Covid misery isn't a problem compared to the prospect of negotiating a deal that might ease sanctions and help the regime survive.