The coronavirus pandemic caught the Western world unprepared despite all the technology and medical advances available in those countries. What about Iran and the Arab world? How are they coping? These dictatorial states know how to control their populations and suppress both information and unrest, but appear for the most part to have no idea how to fight an invisible virus.

There is little indication that Middle Eastern rulers are learning any lessons from the devastating coronavirus. Nor is there any suggestion that they are willing to see the pandemic as an opportunity to negotiate new social contracts at a time when the virus has temporarily taken the wind out of the sails of mass anti-government protests.