“A scourge of biblical proportions”

Pestilence and disease?

Check.

Earthquake?

Check.

Plague of locusts?

Check!

Jerusalem Post:  “Swarms of locusts expected to plague Africa and Middle East, UN group says: The swarms represent “an unprecedented threat to food security,” according to the Locust Watch website.”

“Locust swarm branded ‘scourge of biblical proportions’ by UN as new plague forecast: The locust swarm ravaging East Africa is a “scourge of biblical proportions” according to a statement released by the United Nations as a new swarm of locusts threatens Egypt.”

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It’s interesting to note that the locust swarm or plague is expected to hit Iran, along with some other places, with particular vehemence.

What impact might this have?  We don’t know.  The Iranian regime is already, or so we’re told, struggling with the impact of economic and trade sanctions imposed by the United States.  Oil prices — and, therefore, oil revenues — are severely down.  The sclerotic Islamic regime is widely unpopular among many of the younger Iranian generation, who are tired of being cut off from the rest of the world.  The downing of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on 8 January 2020, which killed all 176 passengers and crew — nearly half of whom were Iranian citizens — led to mass protests on the streets calling for the removal of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, and it is said that anger about that tragedy still smolders.  Most recently, the regime’s apparently incompetent and dishonest response to the challenge of COVID-19 has infuriated many Iranians.  And, now, a locust plague and potential food shortages?

“Coronavirus Outbreak Is Pressuring Iran’s Government. That Makes Some U.S. Officials Nervous”

“Power Struggle Hampers Iran’s Coronavirus Response: President Hassan Rouhani has been severely criticized for not acting forcefully against the epidemic. Now he and the military, newly empowered to intervene, are fighting over control.”

“Where Is Iran’s Supreme Leader?  Senior leaders are sick with the coronavirus.”

I predict that the regime will make at least some efforts to blame the coronavirus on the United States and Israel, which is to say on the CIA and the Mossad.  Totalitarian governments often use their monopolistic control of the news media to blame their own incompetence and their own oppressions upon external enemies.  And the Iranian government has done this before:

Many, many years ago, an outbreak of anthrax occurred in the area of Ahvaz, in the very southwestern corner of Iran, near the border with Iraq and not too far from Kuwait, at the head of the Persian Gulf.  Many cattle and sheep died of the disease.  Such things happen, of course.  But one explanation apparently circulated by the Islamic Republic was that agents of the CIA and Mossad had parachuted in by night and injected anthrax into the animals . . .