Earlier on Sunday, Iran House of Music managing director Hamidreza Nurbakhsh announced that Moradkhani had gone into a coma in his struggle with the effects of the virus.

Moradkhani was the director of the Music Center before he was appointed as the deputy culture minister for artistic affairs in 2013 when Ali Jannati took the helm of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance in Hassan Rouhani’s first administration. 

In December 2017, Moradkhani was replaced with Mojtaba Hosseini by the new culture minister, Seyyed Abbas Salehi, following some changes made within the ministry to lessen pressure from certain people who had been critical of the organization for its more tolerant policies.

In a message published on Monday, Salehi expressed his condolence over the death of Moradkhani.

“His long career in cultural management and his creative, constructive, and systematic actions in this field had changed him into an efficient manager for artists and cultural figures,” he said in the message.     

Mojtaba Hosseini, the deputy of art affairs in the Culture Ministry, and Qader Ashena, the director-general of performing arts in the ministry, director of the Roudaki Foundation, as well as Sarvar Bakhti, the head of ECO Cultural Institute (ECI), also paid tribute to the late Iranian.

A psychology graduate from the University of Tehran, Moradkhani, served as the deputy of art affairs in the Culture Ministry from 2013-2017.

He was the head of the Music Center of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance from 2004-2007 and cofounded the Museum of Music in 2009 in Tehran.