Iranian Cleric: People ‘Become Homosexuals’ After Receiving Coronavirus Vaccine

Iranian religious leader Ayatollah Abbas Tabrizian, based in the holy city of Qom, instructed his followers this week that vaccines for the Wuhan coronavirus cause the recipients to “become homosexuals.”

“Don’t go near those who have had the COVID [Chinese coronavirus] vaccine. They have become homosexuals,” Tabrizian warned on the social media platform Telegram, where the Jerusalem Post noted he has about 210,000 followers.

The Jerusalem Post noted Tabrizian has “a history of anti-Western medicine views,” including a video last year in which he burned a Western medical textbook because “Islamic medicine” supposedly made it irrelevant. 

Iranian dissidents said that in addition to being obsessed with persecuting homosexuals, Tabrizian and other fire-breathing imams are hoping to frighten the Iranian public out of using vaccines so regime officials can hoard Iran’s limited supply for themselves.

Iran announced over the weekend that human trials will soon begin on its second locally-produced coronavirus vaccine candidate, Razi COV-Pars. Iranian Health Minister Saeed Namaki claimed the vaccine candidate was highly effective, with limited side effects, in animal trials.

Iran’s first vaccine candidate, COVIranBarekat, began human trials in December and supposedly completed the first phase successfully on the same day human trials were announced for the Razi vaccine. Iranian officials claimed unnamed Arab countries have already expressed interest in purchasing COVIranBarekat.

Iran’s primary foreign vaccine — the one that induces homosexuality, according to Ayatollah Tabrizian — comes from Russia. Iran took delivery on the first 10,000 doses of Russia’s Sputnik V last week and is scheduled to begin inoculating healthcare workers on Tuesday. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei banned the import of British and American vaccines in early January.

Tabrizian’s home city of Qom was the epicenter of Iran’s coronavirus epidemic. The regime made the outbreak much worse by attempting to conceal its existence for as long as possible, fearful of suppressing turnout for a showpiece parliamentary election and worried about offending Iran’s powerful trading partners in China. Qom has a sizable Chinese population, plus headquarters for the local branches of numerous Chinese corporations.

“In February, the Iranian government had invited more than 700 Chinese mullahs to Qom in an attempt to improve relations with the Chinese authorities from whom Khamenei hoped to obtain economic assistance. The visiting mullahs almost certainly brought the infection to Qom and when the authorities realized there was an outbreak of COVID-19 [coronavirus] on Feb. 19, they stupidly evacuated the mullahs, sending them to cities across Iran, in an attempt to flee the deadly virus. This outrageous policy quickly spread the contagion across the entire country,” UPI reported in March 2020.

Qom was also the city where hardline Shiite Muslims insisted on continuing worship services at crowded holy shrines at the height of the pandemic, including such decidedly non-social-distancing practices as kissing and licking sacred objects. Some Iranian clerics claimed it was impossible to contract the Chinese coronavirus at the holy shrines because they are “places of healing.” Tabrizian himself infamously claimed that rectal applications of violet leaf oil could cure the coronavirus.