Secretary of State Mike Pompeo argued that “today in Iran [amidst the COVID-19 outbreak], the people who are most harmed by Iran’s failure to acknowledge the problem and to accept the fact that they… allowed Chinese flights to continue to come into the country from Tehran when they knew they shouldn’t have, but they didn’t want to upset their Chinese friends, the people most harmed by that are their own people”. He added that “the people in those countries will ultimately hold their leaders responsible for this. And I think this, too, is why this disinformation campaign is taking place. They want to try and deflect responsibility from the poor decisions that those leaders undertook”. In related comments, Pompeo asserted that “instead of inventing reasons to blame the U.S. for his government’s gross mishandling of the Wuhan virus [ie, COVID-19] outbreak in Iran, President Rouhani can better serve the Iranian people by saying ‘yes’ to our offer of humanitarian aid”.