Dissident group claims coronavirus death toll in Iran tops 20,000

An international Iranian dissident group says the country’s death toll from the coronavirus outbreak is much higher than the government has reported — more than three times the current estimate.

Iran has been hit particularly hard by the coronavirus, with government officials reporting nearly 65,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 4,000 deaths.

But the exiled National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) claimed Wednesday that the government has not been honest about the death toll, and say the toll is more than 20,000 to date with infections more than 500,000 among its 83 million people.

The group, which says it has a wide network of informants inside Iran, asserted during a virtual briefing Wednesday that at least 2,050 people have died from the virus in Qom alone, which is considered to be the epicenter of the coronavirus crisis in Iran.

Ali Safavi, a member of the group’s foreign affairs committee, said during the briefing that the organization has “reliable evidence that the regime knew about this virus as early as late January, most likely earlier, but did not inform the public or the world about it.”

In a new report released Wednesday, the NCRI claims that “Tehran still refuses to provide accurate information about the number of fatalities.”

“The nearly month-long criminal cover-up was definitely a key factor in the rapid outbreak in Iran, a crime against humanity for which the regime’s leaders must be brought to justice,” the group said.

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