60 Minutes reporter Lesley Stahl recently traveled to Tehran to interview Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi, only to confirm all of the assumptions about the man and the government he leads.
During the interview, Raisi rejected Israel’s right to exist, engaged in Holocaust denialism, and all but admitted to the attempted assassination of former national-security adviser John Bolton and former secretary of state Mike Pompeo. Raisi also stated that mass execution is a “proportionate” punishment for political prisoners.
Was anyone expecting something different? Raisi didn’t emerge out of oblivion. He’s earned his chops in this odious regime by being one of the most Robespierrean participants of the Iranian Revolution, and is now considered one of the potential successors to the ailing Supreme Leader. Raisi has been known as a hardliner since he served as a member of the “death committee,” responsible for executing thousands of political prisoners in Iran in the 1980s. For this and other depraved activities, he has been accused of numerous crimes against humanity by the U.N. and various NGOs.
The foreign-policy establishment’s incredulity about Iran’s nefarious ambitions is staggering. If State Department officials simply took Raisi and Ayatollah Khamenei at their word, they’d be more clear-eyed about the prospects of a potential rapprochement with the Islamic Republic.
Raisi is a genocidal authoritarian who would like nothing more than to see another Holocaust occur in the 21st century. The Biden administration ought to be careful not to give him the means to carry out his wishes.