US sees new pressure point as coronavirus hits Iran

After months of piling pressure on Tehran, the United States is seeing an unexpected new variable -- the novel coronavirus, which has taken a substantial toll not just on Iran but inside its government.

US policymakers are asking whether deaths within the regime are widespread enough that they could alter decision-making -- although a deadly rocket attack Wednesday in Iraq, which Washington blamed on Iran, showed at least that the cycle of conflict between the countries is not abating.

COVID-19, which has infected tens of thousands of people around the world, has hit Iran's government unusually hard, with a number of senior politicians and officials killed or infected by the disease including a vice president, a senior adviser to the foreign minister and a powerful cleric.

General Kenneth McKenzie, head of Central Command which covers the Middle East, said the United States believed the impact was worse than the more than 500 deaths reported -- the world's third highest toll after China and Italy -- and said US policymakers were assessing the political ramifications.

"Of course, death is permanent," McKenzie told reporters Friday.

"In the short term, it's going to make it a lot harder to make decisions. People are separated."
A day earlier, McKenzie told a Senate hearing that the health crisis -- two months after Iranian public outrage over the accidental downing of a civilian Ukrainian plane -- made the leadership "more dangerous" as it would likely seek to "unite the masses of its people against an external target."
"How much that has arrested the ability of the leadership to make policy decisions, that's very difficult for me to say, partly because the policy towards the coronavirus was anemic even before the outbreak made its way into Iran."