Iran is stepping up vaccine imports to combat a fifth wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, a major shift away from its policy of prioritizing domestic vaccine production.

The surge in vaccine imports under Iran’s conservative President Ebrahim Raisi follows an Aug. 11 speech by the supreme leader. In the address, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei described the pandemic as the single biggest problem facing Iran and called for an acceleration of vaccinations either through imports or by domestic production.

Back in January, Khamenei had issued a ban on imports of vaccines produced in the United States and the United Kingdom in an effort to promote the development of Iran’s own Covid-19 vaccine industry...