The New York Times reports:

Hospital medics in Iran are triaging patients on the floors of emergency rooms and in cars parked on the roadside. Lines stretch for blocks outside pharmacies. Taxis double as hearses, transporting corpses from hospitals to cemeteries. In at least one city, laborers are digging mass graves.

Iran is under assault from the most cataclysmic wave yet of the coronavirus, according to interviews with physicians and health workers, social media postings from angry citizens, and even some unusually frank reporting in state media. The aggressive Delta variant has led to record numbers of deaths and infections, and appears to be overwhelming the health system of a country that has been reeling from Covid-19 since the scourge began.

The latest phase of the crisis has intensified the challenges facing Iran’s new hard-line president, Ebrahim Raisi, testing his abilities just days after he took office.

“The situation we are facing is beyond disastrous,” said Dr. Mahdiar Saeedian, a 39-year-old physician in Mashhad, Iran’s second-largest city. “The health care system is on the verge of collapse.”

Even during the 1980-88 war with Iraq, said Dr. Saeedian, who was born during that conflict, “it was not like this.” [Continue reading…]