When we emerge from the coronavirus pandemic, we may find that elements of international relations have changed dramatically. The US trade relationship with China is one example; Iran’s regime is another.
Andrew A. Michta, writing at The American Interest, has this to say about China:
Should the fallout from the Wuhan Virus prove to be as damaging as it looks like it might be, the first casualty should be China’s quest to become the premier manufacturing center for the world. Few corporations will want to again risk being caught in a situation where their entire supply chain has been locked into one country—much less a palpably hostile dictatorship. The subsequent era will, I hope, be one of strategic reconsolidation, with a special focus on onshoring critical supply chains that have been moved to China. Even the siren song of potentially-vast consumer markets in China may end up being more than offset by the trauma we are about to face.
Shadi Hamid at The Atlantic also lays the blame squarely on China:
The political scientist Andrew Michta has drawn controversy and accusations of racism for stating what any measured overview of the evidence makes clear. “The question about assigning agency and blame is pretty straightforward to answer,” he writes in The American Interest. The Chinese state, he says, is culpable.
But is this a time for blame? Yes, it is. Accounting for responsibility when a disaster happens—particularly one likely to devastate entire countries, leaving thousands dead—is not beside the point, particularly as Chinese officials move to take advantage of the crisis and launch a disinformation campaign claiming that the US Army introduced the virus.
Iran is the third hardest-hit country in this pandemic, behind only China and Italy. Today the death toll in Iran neared 1,300. Dozens of members of the regime are sick, the health care system is overwhelmed, and the theocratic dictatorship that rules the country is losing legitimacy. Could this bring long-term change to Iran? Ilan Berman, writing at National Review, raises that possibility:
Soaring inflation. Deepening domestic discontent. An expanding environmental crisis. Even before the outbreak of the novel coronavirus in recent weeks, the Iranian regime was struggling under the weight of domestic problems that increasingly threatened to undermine the integrity of the Islamic Republic. With the advent of COVID-19, however, matters have become much, much worse for the Iranian regime — so much so that it isn’t unreasonable to think that the Iranian regime could buckle under the weight of its own internal contradictions.
Noah Blum at Tablet adds:
The real scope of Iran’s COVID-19 outbreak has not yet become clear, and it remains to be seen whether the ayatollahs can maintain stability in the face of such a public health crisis, which has only been made worse by the theocratic regime’s totalitarian tactics, whiplash policies, and the state of international isolation and economic sanctions that it has brought on its own people by its pursuit of nuclear weapons, development of ballistic missiles, threats against neighboring and regional countries, and genocidal warfare in Syria—policies that the regime is continuing even as it buries its own people in open pits.
