As Iran is still suffering from its fifth wave of Covid-19 infections, the Iranian regime has announced that they intend to resume normal activities, with public prayer gatherings due to resume on Friday, October 22.

According to the regime’s concocted death toll figures, as of Wednesday, the number is approximately 124,500. On the other hand, estimates from the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) suggest that the actual number is above 460,800. The regime has consistently downplayed the seriousness of the pandemic in Iran in a bid to cover up its errors in responding to the crisis.

The People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (MEK) has been continuously analyzing local reports, eyewitness statements, hospitals, and morgue records to draw alternate conclusions about the severity of the public health crisis.

The regime’s first missteps in dealing with the pandemic in its early stages were when the virus was brought into Iran on a flight from China. Documents from Iran’s National Emergency Organization that were obtained by the MEK show that the first cases of Covid-19 were identified in Iran in January 2020, but regime officials failed to make public announcements until more than a month later.

As the announcements coincided with the sham parliamentary elections, they were seemingly timed to provide a cover story for the low turnout in elections. Instead, the low voter numbers were due to an organized boycott following a series of anti-regime protests.

State-orchestrated public demonstrations created perfect conditions for the massive spread of coronavirus at a time when much of the public was being kept in the dark about its very existence. The problem was exacerbated by the fact that information is tightly controlled in Iran and has been growing more in recent years, especially following periods of large-scale unrest.

By February, Iran’s state media had already begun reporting severe under-estimates of infection rates and the death tolls from Covid-19, with many estimates being contradicted in some areas by local officials. The judiciary later threatened that anyone who questioned the estimates given by the regime would be subject to arrest and prosecution.

Regardless of this warning, the estimates provided by the Iranian Resistance have crept into Iranian society through social media and the existence of private virtual networks that have been established to allow many Iranians to get past the government’s filtering of the internet.

Iran’s Health Ministry has predicted that a more serious sixth wave of coronavirus infections is on the horizon, so the expectations of the Iranian people are likely to be tenser as they wait to see how the regime responds to it. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the regime’s only strategy has been to use the deadly virus as a method to control Iran’s restive society, instead of making attempts to get the rates of infection under control.

Due to the public skepticism of the regime’s narratives regarding the pandemic, the regime recently announced that it was canceling the plans to distribute their domestically made Covid-19 vaccine, which has been reported to be untested and widely ineffective.

The creation of a domestic vaccine came after the regime’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei imposed a ban in January on the import of European and American-made vaccines. This lack of reputable vaccines in Iran is what has led to the catastrophic deterioration of the Covid-19 situation in the country this year.

Khamenei’s decision indicated that the severity of the crisis stems not only from simple incompetence but from a deliberate effort to use coronavirus outbreaks as a means of preventing large-scale anti-government protests like those that were active in the months immediately preceding the start of the pandemic.