The Middle East is changing. Israelis now splurge at Gucci and Rolex in Dubai. Saudi women speed down desert highways; and once again Turkish leaders kneel before the call to prayer. One thing, however, remains unchanging: the Iranian government’s ability to find new and evermore sadistic ways of persecuting its own people.
Yesterday, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei announced on live TV that Iran would reject the American BioNTech-Pfizer and British Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines. ‘Imports of US and British vaccines into the country are banned. I have told this to officials and I’m saying it publicly now,’ he said.
This statement is typical in that it both defies belief and is yet utterly unsurprising. Coronavirus hit Iran hard. We now know, from the sterling investigative work of my friend Jake Wallis Simons, that the daily flights from China to Tehran began to take a toll as far back as last January, when three Chinese embassy employees were hospitalised with Covid-19 symptoms.
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