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Mohammad Javad Zarif made the remarks on Monday in an online lecture in English, being the first in a series of five, on global issues titled ‘The World in Transition’ at the Faculty of World Studies of the University of Tehran, which was streamed live on the faculty’s Instagram page.

He added some countries seek to define a new world order in the post-coronavirus era, IRNA wrote.

The minister noted that during the past 30 years, the world witnessed one of its most tumultuous eras, adding, “We have seen many conflicts and wars, drastic modern changes as well as disasters.”

Following the Cold War, he said, some states sought to build a new future, and, thus, not only predicted the future developments, but prescribed them.

Zarif added the world’s superpowers made miscalculations, listing efforts in the past three decades to shape the future global developments as the announcement of the new world order by a former US president, George H. W. Bush and establishment of the Project for the New American Century.

“If we seek to know what is going on and prevent the occurrence of bad events, we should know where we are and what our destination is.”

He recalled that US President Donald Trump had said his country had spent $7 trillion to establish a new world order and yet has failed to achieve the desired goal.

“I believe that entirely Western approaches have failed to provide an accurate understanding of global events. The emerging world order will not be an entirely Western one.”

He said Iran has been a target of global aggression ever since it chose to move outside the accepted framework of Western policies.

The US administration, including Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, seek to interpret international developments and events in security terms, Zarif added, noting that they are doing the same thing with regard to the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, insisting upon calling it the China virus.

He described such a policy as a bit childish, saying however, in reality, it follows the same policy of dealing with every problem as a security issue.

The miscalculations have led to the spread of terrorism and extremism across the globe, the minister noted.

This is due to a failure to understand the notion of the transition, he underlined.

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But governors from both parties were quick to push back, noting they have primary responsibility for ensuring public safety in their states and would decide when it’s safe to begin a return to normal operations.

Trump would not offer specifics about the source of his asserted power, which he claimed, despite constitutional limitations, was absolute.

“When somebody is president of the United States, the authority is total,” Trump said Monday at the White House. “The governors know that”, AP reported.

The comments came not long after Democratic leaders in the Northeast and along the West Coast announced separate state compacts to coordinate their efforts to scale back stay-at-home orders or reopen businesses on their own timetables.

Anxious to put the crisis behind him, Trump has been discussing with senior aides how to roll back federal social distancing recommendations that expire at the end of the month.

While Trump has issued national recommendations advising people to stay home, it has been governors and local leaders who have instituted mandatory restrictions, including shuttering schools and closing non-essential businesses. Some of those orders carry fines or other penalties, and in some jurisdictions extend into the early summer.

And governors made clear Monday they wouldn’t tolerate pressure to act before they deem it safe.

“All of these executive orders are state executive orders and so, therefore, it would be up to the state and the governor to undo a lot of that,” New Hampshire Republican Gov. Chris Sununu said on CNN.

“The government doesn’t get opened up via Twitter. It gets opened up at the state level,” said Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat.

Meanwhile, governors were banding together, with New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Rhode Island agreeing to coordinate their actions. The governors of California, Oregon, and Washington announced a similar pact. While each state is building its own plan, the three West Coast states have agreed to a framework saying they will work together, put their residents’ health first and let science guide their decisions.

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, stressed the efforts would take time.

“The house is still on fire,” Murphy said on a conference call with reporters. “We still have to put the fire out, but we do have to begin putting in the pieces of the puzzle that we know we’re going to need … to make sure this doesn’t reignite.”

Trump, however, insisted it was his decision to make.

“The president of the United States calls the shots,” he said, promising to release a paper outlining his legal argument.

Trump can use his bully pulpit to pressure states to act or threaten them with consequences, but the Constitution gives public health and safety responsibilities primarily to state and local officials.

Though Trump abandoned his goal of beginning to roll back social distancing guidelines by Easter, he has been itching to reboot an economy that has dramatically contracted as businesses have shuttered, leaving millions of people out of work and struggling to obtain basic commodities. The closure has also undermined Trump’s reelection message, which hinged on a booming economy.

Trump’s claim that he could force governors to reopen their states also represents a dramatic shift in tone. For weeks Trump has argued that states, not the federal government, should lead the response to the crisis. And he has refused to publicly pressure states to enact stay-at-home restrictions, citing his belief in local control of government.

While Trump can use his daily White House briefings and Twitter account to try to shape public opinion and pressure governors to bend to his will, “there are real limits on the president and the federal government when it comes to domestic affairs,” John Yoo, a University of California at Berkeley law school professor, said on a recent Federalist Society conference call.

Mississippi Republican Gov. Tate Reeves, a supporter of Trump, said the question of when to lift restrictions would be “a joint effort” between Washington and the states.

Talk about how and when to reboot the nation’s economy has come as Trump has bristled at criticism that he was slow to respond to the virus and that lives could have been saved had social distancing recommendations been put in place sooner.

That frustration was amplified by comments made by Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious diseases expert, who told CNN on Sunday that, “obviously,” had the country “started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives.”

Trump responded by reposting a tweet that included the line, “Time to #FireFauci,” raising alarms that Trump might consider trying to oust the 79-year-old doctor. But at Monday’s briefing, Trump insisted Fauci’s job was safe after Fauci took the podium to try to explain his comments.

Trump has complained to aides and confidants about Fauci’s positive media attention and his willingness to contradict the president in interviews and from the briefing room stage, according to two Republicans close to the White House. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss internal conversations.

But Trump has told aides that he knows blowback to remove Fauci would be fierce and that – at least for now – he is stuck with the doctor. On more than one occasion, however, he has urged that Fauci be left out of task force briefings or have his speaking role curtailed, according to the Republicans.

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Commenting on the domestic banking system’s supporting plans for reducing the ‎negative economic impacts of the coronavirus crisis in the country in an ‎Instagram post on Saturday, Abdolnaser Hemmati wrote, “All that the government ‎and the CBI want is to provide the people of the country with greater and more ‎extensive gratuitous financial assistance.”‎

He regretted, however, that cruel US sanctions, coupled with a decline in oil prices ‎and the costs involved in the fight against the spread of the virus, have created an ‎economic bottleneck for the government, limiting its resources. ‎

Hemmati added that despite these problems, the Iranian banking system will ‎immediately grant low-interest (four-percent) loans (between $238 and $476) to ‎four million low-income families in the country. ‎

He added that the CBI will also offer low-interest loans to the economic agencies ‎and businesses harmed by the spread of the virus.‎

Earlier, Hemmati said the domestic banking system will provide maximum ‎assistance to the domestic tourism sector that has been harmed by the spread of the ‎coronavirus.‎

He made the remark in an Instagram post, adding, “Today, along with First Vice ‎President [Es’haq Jahangiri], I attended a meeting with those involved in the ‎domestic tourism, cultural heritage, and handicrafts sectors. The officials of these ‎sectors, as well as the heads of the related associations, expounded on the problems ‎they face on account of the coronavirus contagion in the country at a time when ‎their activities should have been at their peak.” ‎

Hemmati said under normal circumstances, hotels, tourism and handicraft centers ‎as well as travel agencies in Iran reach the peak of their activities and income ‎generation during the New Year holidays (March 20-April 1), adding that this year, ‎their activities were completely suspended during the high season.‎

In the meeting, he added, they presented remarkable proposals concerning the ‎postponement of the due date for the payment of the installments and receiving ‎new loans to prevent further damage to their businesses.‎

The CBI governor also stressed that the biggest harm the virus causes is ‎endangering the lives of Iranian people, which is far more important than its ‎negative impacts on the economy.‎

He gave the assurance that the country’s banking system would provide, with ‎maximum assistance, the domestic tourism sector harmed by the coronavirus ‎spread, as prosperity would be restored to the sector only if the situation in the ‎country returns to normal and the spread of the virus is fully contained.‎

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“US is not ready to think about sanctions relief for Iran. OK, leave alone humanitarian considerations,” the Russian diplomat said in a message on Twitter on Tuesday.

He added, “In any case, this is not pragmatic taking into account that COVID-19 can spill over to neighboring countries and affect 70,000 US troops in the region and a lot of US civilians”.

Iran has been among the countries hardest hit by the new coronavirus, which first showed up in China in late December 2019 before spreading to other parts of the world.

Iran’s Health Ministry spokesman announced on Monday that more than 24,000 coronavirus patients have recovered from the disease so far and have been discharged from hospital.

Kianoosh Jahanpoor said the number of people tested positive for COVID-19 across the country has reached 60,500 following the detection of 2,274 new cases since yesterday.

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Speaking at a cabinet meeting on Sunday, Rouhani added, “It is not like we say that in a week or 10 days there would be no coronavirus in Iran and the world,” IRNA reported.

He said the coronavirus has come, entered the society and is here, noting that, “We are required to prepare the society for a kind of confrontation with it.”

Commenting on his video conference with Iranian medical experts and specialists on Saturday, the president said, “I asked them whether we are past the peak of the coronavirus contagion in the country, and they said in some provinces, yes, but in some others, this cannot be said for certain. Some said we should wait until the end of the New Year holidays (April 3) to be able to assess the country’s situation.”

He noted that all of them agreed that the coronavirus spread was a surprising issue for the world and that no medical authority predicted that almost all countries would, one day, be grappling with such an invasive and contagious disease, capable of infecting such a large number of people in such a short time.

Rouhani added the experts said a similar virus had attacked the world 140 years ago, but nothing like that had happened up to now.

He said the experts and specialists noted that coronavirus is like the seasonal flu that comes and goes and reaches a peak at a certain time of the year. “Thus we are required to prepare ourselves for learning how to continue our life under the circumstances where the virus is still in the society until a vaccine or effective cure would be developed, which is not the case at present.”

Therefore, Rouhani, said, efforts are required to prevent a peak in the spread of the virus in a particular province or city lest the health system would experience severe difficulty and anxiety.

“We are required to manage the situation in such a way to enable our health system to treat patients and thus help gradually overcome the crisis.”

He said perhaps a large number of the experts stressed that the government should continue enforcement of the restrictions for another week, noting that the move would boost confidence about a better resumption of activities in the society.

On Friday, the Iranian government began implementing a social-distancing plan to contain the coronavirus spread and announced that it will continue until April 8. Under the scheme, the government banned unnecessary intercity and intracity travels, closed inessential businesses and commercial centers and imposed a public lockdown.

Rouhani added the resumption of activities does not mean that the conditions will return to normal and the society can stop complying with the hygiene protocols.

“We are required to continue this new lifestyle which includes refraining from shaking hands, keeping a certain distance from each other, promoting the use of telephone, cyberspace and the Internet. Our life has become electronic and this has to continue for a while.”

The president stressed that the disease may help create opportunities for progress in certain fields, such as promoting the use of the cyberspace and online businesses in the country.

He said the experts told him that the government’s efforts to fight coronavirus have been acceptable and effective and called for special investments to develop a vaccine for the disease in the country.

Rouhani stressed that the National Headquarters for Managing and Fighting Coronavirus has, up to now, made no decision without discussing it in expert committees first.

The president added in addition to protecting the public health, boosting domestic production is also an important issue for the government as people have a number of basic needs that must be met.

He described as very important ensuring the security of the society, saying Iran’s Armed Forces and police are constantly working to this end.

Warning against sparking any political, partisan or racial disputes, Rouhani said the coronavirus spread is a global issue and “we want to resolve it successfully”.

He called on his government and people to strengthen their confidence in each other and do their best to become closer to one another in order to achieve better results.

The president said according to a report by Health Minister Saeid Namaki, Iran has an acceptable place in the global ranking in terms of fighting the coronavirus spread and the number of the recovered patients.

He noted, “The health minister said that, in general, this week the situation of the country had been better compared to the previous one.

“Despite being under US unilateral sanctions, we have been able to resist well against the virus.”

In May 2018, President Donald Trump pulled the US out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), ‎signed between Iran and the P5+1 in July 2015, and reimposed Washington’s unilateral sanctions on ‎Tehran. The sanctions have hindered, among many other things, the delivery of international humanitarian ‎aid, drugs, and medical equipment to Iran, particularly, now that the country is fighting against the ‎coronavirus. ‎

He stressed, “We are required to be ready for the post-coronavirus period.”

The president appreciated efforts by the country’s physicians, nurses and medical staff, saying the Iranian government uses all its capacities to fully support those who are fighting coronavirus at the forefront of the domestic health sector, as people’s health is the most important issues of the country.

The coronavirus, which causes a respiratory disease, emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in ‎Hubei Province late last year and is currently affecting a large number of countries and territories across ‎the globe. It has infected and killed people in a large number of countries. ‎

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