The Biden administration has made a strategic error by memorializing Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi. Raisi was killed in a helicopter crash in Iran on Sunday.
The State Department issued a statement on Monday asserting, “The United States expresses its official condolences for the death of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, Foreign Minister Amir-Abdollahian, and other members of their delegation in a helicopter crash in northwest Iran. As Iran selects a new president, we reaffirm our support for the Iranian people and their struggle for human rights and fundamental freedoms.”
This is very poor statecraft. For a start, the cursory hat tip to Iranian human rights is laughable. Raisi, after all, spent his life ensuring the destruction of Iranian human rights. He was renowned for his zealous repression of his own people and his comfort in executing those who dared to demand a better future.
True, diplomatic courtesy would justify a private note of condolence on the death of foreign minister Abdollahian. But there was no need to memorialize Raisi publicly. A far more appropriate response would have been to simply ignore Raisi’s death. Raisi wasn’t just an ardent enemy of the United States but was a leading agitator in that pursuit. As former Trump administration State Department official Gabriel Noronha noted, “The State Department sent its condolences on the death of Ebrahim Raisi. Raisi was overseeing the Ministry of Intelligence’s efforts to assassinate senior former U.S. diplomats, including Secretary Blinken’s predecessor, Mike Pompeo, and my former boss Brian Hook.”
This is no exaggeration. Iran has engaged in multiple plots to assassinate these and other officials in retaliation for the January 2020 U.S. drone strike that killed Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani.
As the Washington Examiner first reported in March 2022, Iranian officers were responsible for a plot to assassinate former national security adviser John Bolton. Threats to Bolton endure to this day. Additional Iranian assassination threats to Hook and Pompeo have required Diplomatic Security Service protective details to be assigned to both men, stretching that agency.
Raisi did nothing to hide his support for these plots. At the U.N. General Assembly session last September, a visit he ironically made under U.S. Secret Service protection, Raisi reaffirmed that Iran would use “all tools and capacities in order to bring to justice the perpetrators and all those who had a hand in [Soleimani’s killing].” Iran would “not rest until that is done,” he said, adding that “the blood of the oppressed will not be forgotten, and the ropes of the guilty will bring them to justice.”
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This conduct is incompatible with the State Department’s statement. Or at least it should be. When a foreign leader both orchestrates and agitates in favor of the assassination of American civilians, he crosses a clear line. That Raisi has also supported IRGC terrorist plots against civilian interests in the U.S. and elsewhere only emphasizes this concern.
Showing unnecessary regret over Raisi’s passing, the U.S. risks sending a new message of weakness to Iran. At the very least, the Biden administration dishonors Raisi’s victims and those he would have helped to kill had Iran’s various plots not been detected. A far better response would have been to simply ignore Raisi’s plight entirely.