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Fire fighters and municipality workers with protective suits disinfect the streets, buses and taxies as a precaution to the coronavirus (Covid-19) in Tehran, Iran on March 06, 2020. (Photo: Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
Babak Dehghanpisheh at Reuters reports that Iranian President Hassan Rouhani announced on Thursday that the coronavirus Covid-19 has spread to nearly all of the 31 provinces of the huge country (Iran is as big geographically as Spain, France and Germany combined, and its population rivals that of Germany at 81 million). Iran was reporting at least 90 dead and 3,000 infected on Thursday, but those numbers are widely thought to be much lower than the reality.
Several high government officials have come down with the virus, included a vice president and the deputy minister of health, and 8 percent of parliament has been sickened. Two senior officials have died, one an adviser to clerical Leader Ali Khamenei.
Iran is finally beginning to take steps to address the crisis. The government has cancelled Friday prayers this week, as occasions for large gatherings of people where the infection could spread. It is also deploying the army. The Tehran Fire Department helped disinfect the Grand Bazaar. I think avoiding going to the Grand Bazaar for a while, though, would be more efficacious.
In an excellent overview, Meghan Tobin of Hong Kong's South China Morning Post notes that some observers see Iran as the Middle East epicenter of the virus outbreak, playing the role in West Asia that China and South Korea are playing in the East.
Some of the severity of the outbreak is because of Trump administration policy, and some of it derives from the Iranian government just not being very good.
Some of the failures here come from the Iranian government initially wishing to save face. For that reason, it refused to postpone parliamentary elections, which saw a large number of fanatically pro-government hard liners elected. In that regard, as I pointed out Donald Trump and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei have a lot in common.
Trump has repeatedly downplayed the seriousness of the novel coronavirus. He insists on continuing to hold big political rallies, which have never been necessary for a sitting president. On Thursday he alleged a death rate of 1 percent. He may in the end be right, but at the moment the evidence shows an over 3 percent mortality rate. It isn't that what he said is egregious, but that his reasons for saying it are ignoble. He has said that it is no more deadly than the flu (which is certainly false by orders of magnitude), and that it will be over quickly, and that some people may come to work with it (they may but they shouldn't!) and will nevertheless get better. He is transparently driven to spread around these exaggerations in order to talk back up the markets and to make sure the public does not blame him for having tried (unsuccessfully) to cut the budget of the Centers for Disease Control, having succeeded in getting rid of the position on the National Security Council responsible for coordinating efforts to combat infectious disease, and having aggressively pushed an anti-science agenda.
If you were an evil comic book villain attempting to kill large numbers of people with a disease outbreak, you could not do a better job in putting people in harm's way than Trump has been doing.
Exactly how deadly this Dr. Pangloss approach to an infectious disease outbreak can be is demonstrated by the case of Iran, where for weeks the ruling Shiite clerics downplayed the seriousness of the problem. Some were even encouraging people to keep going on pilgrimage to shrines of Shiite saints in places like Qom, where people typically rub or even kiss brass railing around the cenotaph to receive blessings. The pious but terminally stupid even believe that the blessings of the ancient deceased saint are so powerful that he or she will protect against the infection.
But it is not only religious beliefs that kept the government from acting. It is under "maximum pressure" from the Trump administration, which is attempting to use a financial and trade blockade to vastly weaken or even overthrow the government. Under such straitened circumstances, the government felt that it could not afford to look as though it is vulnerable.
Likewise, Iranians are living on the edge because Trump has, without a shred of legality, stopped Iranian oil exports, which had been a big part of the economy. The US government-funded site Radio Farda estimates that Iran is only exporting about 250,000 barrels a day of petroleum, a tenth of what it was exporting before Trump breached the 2015 Iran deal that the US had signed, and unilaterally imposed the severest possible blockade on Iran.
Although the Trump blockade does not prevent medical imports, it does prevent many Iranian banks from handling the orders, and the blockade has thrown many Iranians into such poverty that they cannot afford medicine and medical equipment from abroad.
Because the US Treasury Department imposes third-party sanctions on European, Indian and other firms for trading with Iran, Tehran has been forced into a tight dependency on China, the only country willing and able to at least somewhat defy Trump. That dependency meant that when the coronavirus outbreak was reported in January, Iran did not have the luxury of cutting off trade with China or travel to that country, as Ms. Tobin shows.
There is plenty of blame to go around for the health disaster in Iran, but it certainly is the case that the Trump administration bears some of the blame for all the people who will be sickened and for those who will die, because it has chosen the blunt instrument of economic blockade on civilians to deal with Iran rather than diplomacy.
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Babak Dehghanpisheh at Reuters reports that Iranian President Hassan Rouhani announced on Thursday that the coronavirus Covid-19 has spread to nearly all of the 31 provinces of the huge country (Iran is as big geographically as Spain, France and Germany combined, and its population rivals that of Germany at 81 million). Iran was reporting at least 90 dead and 3,000 infected on Thursday, but those numbers are widely thought to be much lower than the reality.
Several high government officials have come down with the virus, included a vice president and the deputy minister of health, and 8 percent of parliament has been sickened. Two senior officials have died, one an adviser to clerical Leader Ali Khamenei.
Iran is finally beginning to take steps to address the crisis. The government has cancelled Friday prayers this week, as occasions for large gatherings of people where the infection could spread. It is also deploying the army. The Tehran Fire Department helped disinfect the Grand Bazaar. I think avoiding going to the Grand Bazaar for a while, though, would be more efficacious.
In an excellent overview, Meghan Tobin of Hong Kong's South China Morning Post notes that some observers see Iran as the Middle East epicenter of the virus outbreak, playing the role in West Asia that China and South Korea are playing in the East.
Some of the severity of the outbreak is because of Trump administration policy, and some of it derives from the Iranian government just not being very good.
Some of the failures here come from the Iranian government initially wishing to save face. For that reason, it refused to postpone parliamentary elections, which saw a large number of fanatically pro-government hard liners elected. In that regard, as I pointed out Donald Trump and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei have a lot in common.
Trump has repeatedly downplayed the seriousness of the novel coronavirus. He insists on continuing to hold big political rallies, which have never been necessary for a sitting president. On Thursday he alleged a death rate of 1 percent. He may in the end be right, but at the moment the evidence shows an over 3 percent mortality rate. It isn't that what he said is egregious, but that his reasons for saying it are ignoble. He has said that it is no more deadly than the flu (which is certainly false by orders of magnitude), and that it will be over quickly, and that some people may come to work with it (they may but they shouldn't!) and will nevertheless get better. He is transparently driven to spread around these exaggerations in order to talk back up the markets and to make sure the public does not blame him for having tried (unsuccessfully) to cut the budget of the Centers for Disease Control, having succeeded in getting rid of the position on the National Security Council responsible for coordinating efforts to combat infectious disease, and having aggressively pushed an anti-science agenda.
If you were an evil comic book villain attempting to kill large numbers of people with a disease outbreak, you could not do a better job in putting people in harm's way than Trump has been doing.
Exactly how deadly this Dr. Pangloss approach to an infectious disease outbreak can be is demonstrated by the case of Iran, where for weeks the ruling Shiite clerics downplayed the seriousness of the problem. Some were even encouraging people to keep going on pilgrimage to shrines of Shiite saints in places like Qom, where people typically rub or even kiss brass railing around the cenotaph to receive blessings. The pious but terminally stupid even believe that the blessings of the ancient deceased saint are so powerful that he or she will protect against the infection.
But it is not only religious beliefs that kept the government from acting. It is under "maximum pressure" from the Trump administration, which is attempting to use a financial and trade blockade to vastly weaken or even overthrow the government. Under such straitened circumstances, the government felt that it could not afford to look as though it is vulnerable.
Likewise, Iranians are living on the edge because Trump has, without a shred of legality, stopped Iranian oil exports, which had been a big part of the economy. The US government-funded site Radio Farda estimates that Iran is only exporting about 250,000 barrels a day of petroleum, a tenth of what it was exporting before Trump breached the 2015 Iran deal that the US had signed, and unilaterally imposed the severest possible blockade on Iran.
Although the Trump blockade does not prevent medical imports, it does prevent many Iranian banks from handling the orders, and the blockade has thrown many Iranians into such poverty that they cannot afford medicine and medical equipment from abroad.
Because the US Treasury Department imposes third-party sanctions on European, Indian and other firms for trading with Iran, Tehran has been forced into a tight dependency on China, the only country willing and able to at least somewhat defy Trump. That dependency meant that when the coronavirus outbreak was reported in January, Iran did not have the luxury of cutting off trade with China or travel to that country, as Ms. Tobin shows.
There is plenty of blame to go around for the health disaster in Iran, but it certainly is the case that the Trump administration bears some of the blame for all the people who will be sickened and for those who will die, because it has chosen the blunt instrument of economic blockade on civilians to deal with Iran rather than diplomacy.
Babak Dehghanpisheh at Reuters reports that Iranian President Hassan Rouhani announced on Thursday that the coronavirus Covid-19 has spread to nearly all of the 31 provinces of the huge country (Iran is as big geographically as Spain, France and Germany combined, and its population rivals that of Germany at 81 million). Iran was reporting at least 90 dead and 3,000 infected on Thursday, but those numbers are widely thought to be much lower than the reality.
Several high government officials have come down with the virus, included a vice president and the deputy minister of health, and 8 percent of parliament has been sickened. Two senior officials have died, one an adviser to clerical Leader Ali Khamenei.
Iran is finally beginning to take steps to address the crisis. The government has cancelled Friday prayers this week, as occasions for large gatherings of people where the infection could spread. It is also deploying the army. The Tehran Fire Department helped disinfect the Grand Bazaar. I think avoiding going to the Grand Bazaar for a while, though, would be more efficacious.
In an excellent overview, Meghan Tobin of Hong Kong's South China Morning Post notes that some observers see Iran as the Middle East epicenter of the virus outbreak, playing the role in West Asia that China and South Korea are playing in the East.
Some of the severity of the outbreak is because of Trump administration policy, and some of it derives from the Iranian government just not being very good.
Some of the failures here come from the Iranian government initially wishing to save face. For that reason, it refused to postpone parliamentary elections, which saw a large number of fanatically pro-government hard liners elected. In that regard, as I pointed out Donald Trump and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei have a lot in common.
Trump has repeatedly downplayed the seriousness of the novel coronavirus. He insists on continuing to hold big political rallies, which have never been necessary for a sitting president. On Thursday he alleged a death rate of 1 percent. He may in the end be right, but at the moment the evidence shows an over 3 percent mortality rate. It isn't that what he said is egregious, but that his reasons for saying it are ignoble. He has said that it is no more deadly than the flu (which is certainly false by orders of magnitude), and that it will be over quickly, and that some people may come to work with it (they may but they shouldn't!) and will nevertheless get better. He is transparently driven to spread around these exaggerations in order to talk back up the markets and to make sure the public does not blame him for having tried (unsuccessfully) to cut the budget of the Centers for Disease Control, having succeeded in getting rid of the position on the National Security Council responsible for coordinating efforts to combat infectious disease, and having aggressively pushed an anti-science agenda.
If you were an evil comic book villain attempting to kill large numbers of people with a disease outbreak, you could not do a better job in putting people in harm's way than Trump has been doing.
Exactly how deadly this Dr. Pangloss approach to an infectious disease outbreak can be is demonstrated by the case of Iran, where for weeks the ruling Shiite clerics downplayed the seriousness of the problem. Some were even encouraging people to keep going on pilgrimage to shrines of Shiite saints in places like Qom, where people typically rub or even kiss brass railing around the cenotaph to receive blessings. The pious but terminally stupid even believe that the blessings of the ancient deceased saint are so powerful that he or she will protect against the infection.
But it is not only religious beliefs that kept the government from acting. It is under "maximum pressure" from the Trump administration, which is attempting to use a financial and trade blockade to vastly weaken or even overthrow the government. Under such straitened circumstances, the government felt that it could not afford to look as though it is vulnerable.
Likewise, Iranians are living on the edge because Trump has, without a shred of legality, stopped Iranian oil exports, which had been a big part of the economy. The US government-funded site Radio Farda estimates that Iran is only exporting about 250,000 barrels a day of petroleum, a tenth of what it was exporting before Trump breached the 2015 Iran deal that the US had signed, and unilaterally imposed the severest possible blockade on Iran.
Although the Trump blockade does not prevent medical imports, it does prevent many Iranian banks from handling the orders, and the blockade has thrown many Iranians into such poverty that they cannot afford medicine and medical equipment from abroad.
Because the US Treasury Department imposes third-party sanctions on European, Indian and other firms for trading with Iran, Tehran has been forced into a tight dependency on China, the only country willing and able to at least somewhat defy Trump. That dependency meant that when the coronavirus outbreak was reported in January, Iran did not have the luxury of cutting off trade with China or travel to that country, as Ms. Tobin shows.
There is plenty of blame to go around for the health disaster in Iran, but it certainly is the case that the Trump administration bears some of the blame for all the people who will be sickened and for those who will die, because it has chosen the blunt instrument of economic blockade on civilians to deal with Iran rather than diplomacy.
"This sends a chilling message that the U.S. is willing to overlook some abuses, signaling that people experiencing human rights violations may be left to fend for themselves," said one Amnesty campaigner.
After leaked drafts exposed the Trump administration's plans to downplay human rights abuses in some allied countries, including Israel, the U.S. Department of State released the final edition of an annual report on Tuesday, sparking fresh condemnation.
"Breaking with precedent, Secretary of State Marco Rubio did not provide a written introduction to the report nor did he make remarks about it," CNN reported. Still, Amanda Klasing, Amnesty International USA's national director of government relations and advocacy, called him out by name in a Tuesday statement.
"With the release of the U.S. State Department's human rights report, it is clear that the Trump administration has engaged in a very selective documentation of human rights abuses in certain countries," Klasing said. "In addition to eliminating entire sections for certain countries—for example discrimination against LGBTQ+ people—there are also arbitrary omissions within existing sections of the report based on the country."
Klasing explained that "we have criticized past reports when warranted, but have never seen reports quite like this. Never before have the reports gone this far in prioritizing an administration's political agenda over a consistent and truthful accounting of human rights violations around the world—softening criticism in some countries while ignoring violations in others. The State Department has said in relation to the reports less is more. However, for the victims and human rights defenders who rely on these reports to shine light on abuses and violations, less is just less."
"Secretary Rubio knows full well from his time in the Senate how vital these reports are in informing policy decisions and shaping diplomatic conversations, yet he has made the dangerous and short-sighted decision to put out a truncated version that doesn't tell the whole story of human rights violations," she continued. "This sends a chilling message that the U.S. is willing to overlook some abuses, signaling that people experiencing human rights violations may be left to fend for themselves."
"Failing to adequately report on human rights violations further damages the credibility of the U.S. on human rights issues," she added. "It's shameful that the Trump administration and Secretary Rubio are putting politics above human lives."
The overarching report—which includes over 100 individual country reports—covers 2024, the last full calendar year of the Biden administration. The appendix says that in March, the report was "streamlined for better utility and accessibility in the field and by partners, and to be more responsive to the underlying legislative mandate and aligned to the administration's executive orders."
As CNN detailed:
The latest report was stripped of many of the specific sections included in past reports, including reporting on alleged abuses based on sexual orientation, violence toward women, corruption in government, systemic racial or ethnic violence, or denial of a fair public trial. Some country reports, including for Afghanistan, do address human rights abuses against women.
"We were asked to edit down the human rights reports to the bare minimum of what was statutorily required," said Michael Honigstein, the former director of African Affairs at the State Department's Bureau of Human Rights, Democracy, and Labor. He and his office helped compile the initial reports.
Over the past week, since the draft country reports leaked to the press, the Trump administration has come under fire for its portrayals of El Salvador, Israel, and Russia.
The report on Israel—and the illegally occupied Palestinian territories, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank—is just nine pages. The brevity even drew the attention of Israeli media. The Times of Israel highlighted that it "is much shorter than last year's edition compiled under the Biden administration and contained no mention of the severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza."
Since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, Israeli forces have slaughtered over 60,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to local officials—though experts warn the true toll is likely far higher. As Israel has restricted humanitarian aid in recent months, over 200 people have starved to death, including 103 children.
The U.S. report on Israel does not mention the genocide case that Israel faces at the International Court of Justice over the assault on Gaza, or the International Criminal Court arrest warrants issued for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The section on war crimes and genocide only says that "terrorist organizations Hamas and Hezbollah continue to engage in the
indiscriminate targeting of Israeli civilians in violation of the law of armed conflict."
As the world mourns the killing of six more Palestinian media professionals in Gaza this week—which prompted calls for the United Nations Security Council to convene an emergency meeting—the report's section on press freedom is also short and makes no mention of the hundreds of journalists killed in Israel's annihilation of the strip:
The law generally provided for freedom of expression, including for members of the press and other media, and the government generally respected this right for most Israelis. NGOs and journalists reported authorities restricted press coverage and limited certain forms of expression, especially in the context of criticism against the war or sympathy for Palestinians in Gaza.
Noting that "the human rights reports have been among the U.S. government's most-read documents," DAWN senior adviser and 32-year State Department official Charles Blaha said the "significant omissions" in this year's report on Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank render it "functionally useless for Congress and the public as nothing more than a pro-Israel document."
Like Klasing at Amnesty, Sarah Leah Whitson, DAWN's executive director, specifically called out the U.S. secretary of state.
"Secretary Rubio has revamped the State Department reports for one principal purpose: to whitewash Israeli crimes, including its horrific genocide and starvation in Gaza. The report shockingly includes not a word about the overwhelming evidence of genocide, mass starvation, and the deliberate bombardment of civilians in Gaza," she said. "Rubio has defied the letter and intent of U.S. laws requiring the State Department to report truthfully and comprehensively about every country's human rights abuses, instead offering up anodyne cover for his murderous friends in Tel Aviv."
The Tuesday release came after a coalition of LGBTQ+ and human rights organizations on Monday filed a lawsuit against the U.S. State Department over its refusal to release the congressionally mandated report.
This article has been updated with comment from DAWN.
"We will not sit idly by while political leaders manipulate voting maps to entrench their power and subvert our democracy," said the head of Common Cause.
As Republicans try to rig congressional maps in several states and Democrats threaten retaliatory measures, a pro-democracy watchdog on Tuesday unveiled new fairness standards underscoring that "independent redistricting commissions remain the gold standard for ending partisan gerrymandering."
Common Cause will hold an online media briefing Wednesday at noon Eastern time "to walk reporters though the six pieces of criteria the organization will use to evaluate any proposed maps."
The Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group said that "it will closely evaluate, but not automatically condemn, countermeasures" to Republican gerrymandering efforts—especially mid-decade redistricting not based on decennial censuses.
Amid the gerrymandering wars, we just launched 6 fairness criteria to hold all actors to the same principled standard: people first—not parties. Read our criteria here: www.commoncause.org/resources/po...
[image or embed]
— Common Cause (@commoncause.org) August 12, 2025 at 12:01 PM
Common Cause's six fairness criteria for mid-decade redistricting are:
"We will not sit idly by while political leaders manipulate voting maps to entrench their power and subvert our democracy," Common Cause president and CEO Virginia Kase Solomón said in a statement. "But neither will we call for unilateral political disarmament in the face of authoritarian tactics that undermine fair representation."
"We have established a fairness criteria that we will use to evaluate all countermeasures so we can respond to the most urgent threats to fair representation while holding all actors to the same principled standard: people—not parties—first," she added.
Common Cause's fairness criteria come amid the ongoing standoff between Republicans trying to gerrymander Texas' congressional map and Democratic lawmakers who fled the state in a bid to stymie a vote on the measure. Texas state senators on Tuesday approved the proposed map despite a walkout by most of their Democratic colleagues.
Leaders of several Democrat-controlled states, most notably California, have threatened retaliatory redistricting.
"This moment is about more than responding to a single threat—it's about building the movement for lasting reform," Kase Solomón asserted. "This is not an isolated political tactic; it is part of a broader march toward authoritarianism, dismantling people-powered democracy, and stripping away the people's ability to have a political voice and say in how they are governed."
"Texas law is clear: A pregnant person cannot be arrested and prosecuted for getting an abortion. No one is above the law, including officials entrusted with enforcing it," said an ACLU attorney.
When officials in Starr County, Texas arrested Lizelle Gonzalez in 2022 and charged her with murder for having a medication abortion—despite state law clearly prohibiting the prosecution of women for abortion care—she spent three days in jail, away from her children, and the highly publicized arrest was "deeply traumatizing."
Now, said her lawyers at the ACLU in court filings on Tuesday, officials in the county sheriff's and district attorney's offices must be held accountable for knowingly subjecting Gonzalez to wrongful prosecution.
Starr County District Attorney Gocha Ramirez ultimately dismissed the charge against Gonzalez, said the ACLU, but the Texas bar's investigation into Ramirez—which found multiple instances of misconduct related to Gonzalez's homicide charge—resulted in only minor punishment. Ramirez had to pay a small fine of $1,250 and was given one year of probated suspension.
"Without real accountability, Starr County's district attorney—and any other law enforcement actor—will not be deterred from abusing their power to unlawfully target people because of their personal beliefs, rather than the law," said the ACLU.
The state bar found that Ramirez allowed Gonzalez's indictment to go forward despite the fact that her homicide charge was "known not to be supported by probable cause."
Ramirez had denied that he was briefed on the facts of the case before it was prosecuted by his office, but the state bar "determined he was consulted by a prosecutor in his office beforehand and permitted it to go forward."
"Without real accountability, Starr County's district attorney—and any other law enforcement actor—will not be deterred from abusing their power to unlawfully target people because of their personal beliefs, rather than the law."
Sarah Corning, an attorney at the ACLU of Texas, said the prosecutors and law enforcement officers "ignored Texas law when they wrongfully arrested Lizelle Gonzalez for ending her pregnancy."
"They shattered her life in South Texas, violated her rights, and abused the power they swore to uphold," said Corning. "Texas law is clear: A pregnant person cannot be arrested and prosecuted for getting an abortion. No one is above the law, including officials entrusted with enforcing it."
The district attorney's office sought to have the ACLU's case dismissed in July 2024, raising claims of legal immunity.
A court denied Ramirez's motion, and the ACLU's discovery process that followed revealed "a coordinated effort between the Starr County sheriff's office and district attorney's office to violate Ms. Gonzalez's rights."
The officials' "wanton disregard for the rule of law and erroneous belief of their own invincibility is a frightening deviation from the offices' purposes: to seek justice," said Cecilia Garza, a partner at the law firm Garza Martinez, who is joining the ACLU in representing Gonzalez. "I am proud to represent Ms. Gonzalez in her fight for justice and redemption, and our team will not allow these abuses to continue in Starr County or any other county in the state of Texas."
Gonzalez's fight for justice comes as a wrongful death case in Texas—filed by an "anti-abortion legal terrorist" on behalf of a man whose girlfriend use medication from another state to end her pregnancy—moves forward, potentially jeopardizing access to abortion pills across the country.