A vaccination center, a hospital, a pharmacy, and finally a morgue. The first public visits by Iran’s new hardline president Ebrahim Raisi have made clear his top priority — accelerating imports of Covid-19 vaccines into a country hard hit by the pandemic.
Since the 60-year-old cleric was inaugurated last month, replacing centrist President Hassan Rouhani, there has been a huge rise in imports of vaccines. A regime that in January this year banned western jabs now welcomes them, and Raisi has led the push.
“VVhen the president, like a commander, shows up in the frontline, then all officials realise that no excuses would be acceptable for any delay in importing vaccines,” said Mohammad Hassan Ghosian Moghaddam, a spokesman for the Iranian Red Crescent Society, which is the main conduit for vaccine imports. It buys principally from the Red Cross Society of China. “Ifwe told the previous government we could import 1m doses, the answer was ‘let’s look into it over the next week’. Now, the answer is ‘Why 1m? VVhy not 10m?'”
Raisi’s election victory was marred by public wrath over-engineered polls and the barring of many moderate candidates. With Iran’s centers of power now all in the control of hardline conservatives, Raisi and his cohort want to prove their ability to run the Islamic republic more efficiently than his predecessor.
Constant tensions between hardliners and reformists had made it difficult for Rouhani to make decisions, let alone import vaccines in large quantities. Hardliners had argued that accepting Western vaccines would make Iranians little more than laboratory rats and supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei himself banned the import of all Western jabs.