The midst of a global pandemic is a ripe time for sanctioned regimes to play victim—and a delicate one for the United States to hold up “maximum pressure” campaigns. In Iran and Venezuela, tyrants are seizing on COVID-19’s local ravages to cover up their own role in leaving their people and economies vulnerable. Their pleas for sanctions relief would more easily be exposed as the blame-shifting demagoguery they are if they weren’t backed up by… you guessed it: the European Union.

Tracing back the virus’ spread helps set the stage. COVID-19 is thought to have been brought into Iran by a merchant flying back from Wuhan to his hometown of Qom, south of Tehran, with the first two casualties reported on February 19. What soon became the world’s second largest outbreak—since surpassed by European hotspots and the United States—seemed casually sparked at first. It soon turned inevitable by Iran’s stubborn refusal to cancel flights from China, just as every major airline called off theirs.

The Revolutionary Guard denied it but the airline it operates was found to keep four flights from China running as of February 25. Iran soon recorded eight out of every ten cases in the wider Middle East, a rampant spread flatly denied by officials to boost turnout to a series of public gatherings—the Islamic Revolution’s anniversary, parliamentary elections and the Persian New Year—even as they scapegoated U.S. sanctions for it. This is despite the United States and a range of NGOs reminding global business that only oil sales and credit are targeted by sanctions, leaving shipments of medical supplies and other necessities unaffected.

What’s more, the U.S. State Department came out with an unspecified offer of aid on February 28, an overture left unheeded for a month until Ayatollah Khamenei wrapped his rejection in a shocking heap of conspiracies, claiming the US had built COVID-19 targeting Iranians’ specific genome. “Your medication and help will bring more disease,” he said. In an otherwise fact-based wire by the Associated Press, Joshua Goodman has assessed Iran’s management of the crisis rather bluntly: “scapegoating and pride, not U.S. policies, are causing immense harm.”

In the meantime, Iran asked for $5 billion from the IMF’s “Rapid Financial Instrument”—a fund of ten times that amount for distressed countries’ central banks—a mere two days after the money had been set aside, in what would have become the Fund’s first transaction with the Islamic Republic. Never mind that the United States holds an effective veto over any IMF disbursement, a voting power proportional to its contribution of nearly 18 percent to the fund’s so-called Special Drawing Rights (SDRs).

Rejection of the aid request was a foregone conclusion until—a full month after it was made but only a day after Khamenei turned down U.S. help—the EU came out in support of it through its foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell. To compound the synced timing, Borrell pledged an additional $20 million for Iran and Venezuela—Germany, France and the UK had already chipped in $5 million in early March—and even joined Russia and China in asking the United States to drop sanctions on both. EU member states vote autonomously at the IMF but their combined SDRs could well surpass the United States’ and approve Iran’s ask.

Venezuela’s example is perhaps even more revealing. Maduro was quicker to decree a quarantine—and slower to turn to the IMF for help—but the country’s healthcare system may be one of the world’s least prepared to deal with what has become the fastest-spreading outbreak in the Western Hemisphere. Julio Borges, foreign policy lead in Juan Guaidó’s legitimate government, put it best: “Maduro blames U.S. sanctions, but he is the only one to blame for destroying our healthcare system.”

Yet Caracas has also predictably blamed Washington, blithely peddling the same conspiracy theories about the virus being American-made. This hasn’t prevented it either from panhandling at the IMF for $5 billion—an institution that Maduro was blasting as a “tool of U.S. imperialists” only a month ago. The Fund rejected the ask, bound by its founding charter that forbids it from dealing with governments not recognized by other Fund members, and referred Venezuela to that same first rejection letter when a lower bid for $1 billion was placed. A range of NGOs and multilaterals have taken to calling for aid to flow through Juan Guaidó.

Since being left to deal with Iran’s breaches of the JCPOA on their own after President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the deal in May 2018, EU countries have markedly softened their posture vis-à-vis Tehran, bending over backwards to avoid UN sanctions from snapping back into place by triggering a dispute resolution mechanism built into the treaty instead of referring the breaches to the UN Security Council. Backing Iran’s plea for IMF help is revealing of this equivocal stance.

“We are going to support this request because these two countries are in a very difficult situation mainly due to U.S. sanctions that prevent them from generating revenue by selling oil,” said Borrell. He seemingly ignores that what’s put Iranians at risk is their reckless government, who continues to peddle lunatic conspiracies to the day he pledged $20 million in aid. Most importantly, he didn’t seem the least concerned to oversee that the money be actually spent on tackling COVID-19 and not end up in the pockets of corrupt politicians and terrorist groups, as a growing share of Iranian spending does these days.

Venezuela’s response has arguably been more prudent, but the EU’s offer of help is concerning all the same—if only because it will be cashed in by a government accused by the EU itself of having usurped power. When all is said and done, the money will certainly undermine ongoing efforts to weaken Maduro, who will cling on to the smallest windfall to perpetuate his rule.

This crisis comes at a time when, helped by freefalling oil prices—Iran and Venezuela supply a combined 30 percent of the world’s oil—sanctions are having their desired effect of choking off revenue sources into Iran and Venezuela, which puts the United States in a very tight spot when faced with the all-too-real devastation in these countries under COVID-19. But these regime’s shifting of the blame to the United States covers their own responsibility in bringing about the crisis, by recklessly refusing to protect their people and running their healthcare system to the ground with socialistic policies.

It is one thing to seek to help Iranians and Venezuelans suffering under their government’s mismanagement of COVID-19—an effort limited only by the regimes’ own door-slam on U.S. aid. It is a whole other thing to blame US sanctions as the culprit while calling for unconditional blank cheques from majority U.S.-funded multilaterals, with no guarantee that terrorism and corruption won’t take precedent over innocent people. The EU is free to think that sanctions unintendedly harm civilians, but if it really wanted to help them, it would at least tie the aid to a full stop of conspiracy propaganda and to actual COVID-19 mitigation.

Jorge González-Gallarza Hernández (@JorgeGGallarza) is a writer based in Madrid.