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Three quick takes:     1. Can Iran’s leaders handle the truth on coronavirus? The Islamic Republic faces an escalating crisis of public confidence over its response to the coronavirus. Iran is for now, and after China, a second global hub for the outbreak. While the official Iranian tally of infections is 139 and the death toll 19, the actual numbers are probably higher and will likely spike in coming days. There is little trust in either Iran’s transparency about the numbers or its capacity to address the outbreak, meaning Iran’s leaders face a crisis of confidence and legitimacy, as well as a crisis of public health. A viral recipe: Iran’s outbreak seemed to start in Qom, the hub of Iran’s clerical seminaries and Shiite religious leadership, and spread from there, as we reported here. Iran can’t approach China’s capacity to impose draconian constraints on its population to combat and control the outbreak. As The New York Times explains, “Religious pilgrims, migrant workers, businessmen, soldiers and clerics all flow constantly across Iran’s frontiers, often crossing into countries with few border controls, weak and ineffective governments and fragile health systems,” making it in what one health official termed a “recipe for a massive viral outbreak.” Coronavirus infections in Afghanistan, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Lebanon and Kuwait all lead back to Iran. Iraq, Afghanistan, and Turkey have all closed their borders with Iran, and numerous countries in the region and elsewhere have now shut down travel to Iran. Iran’s winter of discontent: The coronavirus comes as Iran’s government is already reeling. The International Monetary Fund estimated Iran’s gross domestic product may have contracted by nearly 10% in 2019, with no growth expected this year, mainly as a result of US sanctions That decline comes with a projected consumer inflation rate of 31% and unemployment of 12%. And then a seemingly relentless sequence of setbacks: the US killing of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani on Jan. 3; the demonstrations following the accidental shootdown of a Ukrainian passenger plane which killed all 176 on board; and low turnout for elections that, thanks to vetting by Iran’s conservative Council of Guardians, assured a sweep for hard-liners in the Islamic Consultative Assembly (parliament) and the Assembly of Experts. Some officials blamed the low turnout in the elections on the coronavirus. This all adds up to what we have labelled as Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s winter of discontent.