The Iranian Health Care System in the Face of COVID-19 – A Response to Vira Ameli
Authors: Nasser Mohajer, Kaveh Yazdani and Mehrdad Vahabi
This paper is a critique of Vira Ameli’s essay titled “Sanctions and Sickness,” which was published in the March/April 2020 edition of the New Left Review. In her essay, Ameli employs selective evidence and makes inaccurate claims. Her piece is not only an unreserved defense of the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI), but a deceitful portrayal of the IRI’s alleged achievements in building a model health care system and its allegedly successful fight against Covid-19.
In our view, the main problems with Ameli’s essay are as follows: 1) Iran’s health care system is not put into proper historical and comparative perspective; 2) Ameli idealizes the IRI and consequently exculpates it of some of Iran’s delayed and negligent measures for countering the coronavirus pandemic; 3) she includes significant misinformation on socio-economic, medical and political issues, as well as Western media coverage of Iran; 4) Ameli remains silent about the fact that she exclusively and uncritically relies on information and data coming directly from the institutions and media outlets of the IRI, as well as its ardent advocates; 5) she fails to allude to the repressive, hierocratic, anti-democratic, corrupt, inhumane and misogynist structure of the IRI.