“We will prevail in the fight against this virus, which might be the product of an American biological [attack],” Hossein Salami claimed.
By Aaron Sull, World Israel News
The commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) suggested on Thursday that the United States manufactured and released the deadly coronavirus onto the world.
“Today, the country is engaged in a biological battle,” Hossein Salami said, as quoted by Iran’s ISNA news agency.
“We will prevail in the fight against this virus, which might be the product of an American biological [attack] that first spread in China and then to the rest of the world,” he said.
The IRGC commander did not provide any evidence for his claims.
Salami’s accusations come amidst Iran’s rapid outbreak of the deadly virus. As of Thursday, there have reportedly been 3,513 confirmed cases and 107 deaths in Iran attributed to the coronavirus.
“This disease is a widespread one,” Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said during a cabinet meeting this week, as cited by Al-Jazeera.
“It encompasses almost all of our provinces and is, in a sense, a global disease that many countries in the world have become infected with, and we must work together to tackle this problem as quickly as possible,” he said.
Salami’s conspiracy theory follows a slew of other allegations blaming the coronavirus pandemic on the U.S. and Israel.
Earlier this month, Iraqi political analyst Muhammad Sadeq Al-Hashem charged that the coronavirus is an American plot inspired by Zionists to wipe out populations.
In a February piece published by the Suadi Al-Watan, writer Sa’ud Al-Shehry claimed that the coronavirus is a plot hatched by American and Israeli drug companies aimed at increasing their profits.
“A ‘wonder’ virus was discovered yesterday in China; tomorrow it will be discovered in Egypt, but it will not be discovered either today, tomorrow or the day after tomorrow in the U.S. or Israel,” Al-Shehry wrote.
“Look at the statistics on the rate of contagion with the corona[virus] worldwide, and you will learn that the Gulf states hold the first places [in this list], followed by European countries, and you will never find [in these statistics]… [either] the U.S. or Israel,” he said.