Within days of requesting $5 billion from the Washington-based International Monetary Fund (IMF), Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei turned down and mocked America’s offer to send medical assistance to fight the spiraling coronavirus crisis.
At present, Iran is only admitting to approximately 2,000 deaths due to coronavirus. Multiple Middle-East sources and satellite imagery revealing sudden massive expansions to Iranian cemeteries place the number much higher.
Iran’s primary political opposition organization, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MeK), is reporting the number of deaths in Iran as having passed 15,000. In weighing these competing reports, some background on the MeK and the Iranian regime may be helpful: The MeK had been trapped in Iraq following the fall of Saddam Hussein, who allowed them a place to build a paramilitary force and conduct intelligence and information operations against the Iranian regime. I was the base commander at Ashraf, where they were consolidated following the U.S.-led invasion.
During the administrations of Clinton, Bush, and Obama, MeK recognition was a bargaining tool as the U.S. government attempted to appease Iran. This was brought to an end by the D.C. Court of Appeals. Meanwhile, the on-ground operatives of the U.S. intelligence community had a steady stream of agents visiting the MeK and gathering information concerning Iran. MeK has a vast network of informers. On multiple occasions, this organization exposed details of Iran’s highly classified covert nuclear weapons program. Their ability to extract information out of Iran is impressive, and should be given credence, especially as more news sources begin to report that the Iranian regime is hiding their true coronavirus casualty numbers.These multiple sources say that in early February, Tehran started downplaying the growing medical threat. The ruling fundamentalists did not want interruptions to two interconnected activities: on February 11, the government conducted country-wide anniversary celebrations of the 1979 fall of the monarchy; these celebrations were preludes to local legislative elections conducted 10 days later.
[…]
