Iran’s Zarif: US to live in infamy for defunding WHO amid virus pandemic

Young journalists club

News ID: 45764
Iran » Iran
Publish Date: 8:24 - 16 April 2020
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has hit out at the US for deciding to halt funding to the World Health Organization (WHO) amid the coronavirus pandemic, saying the world may now better realize Tehran’s long experience of bearing the brunt of Washington’s bullying that kills people.

Iran’s Zarif: US to live in infamy for defunding WHO amid virus pandemic“The world is learning what Iran has known & experienced all along: US regime's bullying, threatening & vainglorious blathering isn’t just an addiction: it kills people,” Zarif said in a post on Twitter on Wednesday.

“Like "maximum pressure" against Iran, the shameful defunding WHO amid a pandemic will live in infamy,” he added.

US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that he was halting funding to the WHO while a review is conducted.

Trump said the review would cover the UN agency’s “role in severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus.”

The announcement comes as the world is experiencing the worst global pandemic in decades, and as the US president is criticized for downplaying the deadly virus while putting the blame elsewhere.

Trump, whose administration has defied calls to ease the crippling US sanctions against Iran, which were imposed on Tehran as part of Washington’s maximum pressure campaign, claimed on Tuesday that if the WHO had acted appropriately, he could have sooner instituted a travel ban on people from China, where the new coronavirus was first reported late last year.

The US stands first in the number of the total confirmed cases of infection and death worldwide.

According to the latest figures by the worldmeters website, 614,246 cases of infection in the US have been reported so far, with 26,064 death cases, also the highest across the world.

In Iran, which is battling the virus under the toughest ever sanctions by the US, a total of 76,389 cases have been confirmed as of Wednesday, with 4,777 death cases.

 
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