The spread of coronavirus has rapidly come to the Middle East after almost two months of being mostly contained in China, where it has killed more than two thousand people. Iran’s leadership has responded by either ignoring the crisis or denying that it exists, even as all of Iran’s neighboring countries have closed the borders that they share with Iran and began to institute checks on Iranians traveling abroad.
The reaction of Middle Eastern states reveals a lack of coordination in responding to the emerging crises and also creates questions about what kind of impact a virus can have on a region that has deep divisions and smoldering conflicts. For instance, on Sunday evening Israel carried out airstrikes in Gaza and Syria in response to rocket fire from Palestine while the Russian-backed Syrian regime continued to clash with Turkish-backed forces in Syria’s northern Idlib. In Idlib alone, roughly nine hundred thousand people displaced in recent weeks, just some of the millions still living as refugees and internally displaced persons (IDP) across the region.
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