Iranian Leader Uses UN Speech To Level More Threats Against America

Even as agents of the Islamic Republic are known to be plotting to assassinate former American government officials, President Raisi of Iran today used the United Nations stage at New York City’s First Avenue to issue new threats against U.S. leaders.Despite demonstrated support for terrorism, including assassination attempts on American soil, and a record of human rights violations that earned Mr. Raisi the nickname of “Tehran butcher,” America granted the Iranian an entry visa to address the UN General Assembly. President Macron of France conducted a friendly chat with Mr. Raisi at the sidelines of the gathering at what is known as Turtle Bay. A lone low-level American official represented America during Mr. Raisi’s UN speech at the General Assembly, while an Israeli ambassador walked out in protest.The speech raised eyebrows for its lack of self-awareness and statements that seemed to contradict realities, such as the widening, almost weeklong anti-regime uprising in Iran that increasingly exacts casualties.Waving a photo of the now deceased chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ international arm, Qassam Soleimani, Mr. Raisi said that the Americans who “martyred” the late terrorist must pay the price. IRGC agents have long sought to assassinate former U.S. officials — Secretary Pompeo, a national security adviser, John Bolton, and an Iran point man, Brian Hook — to avenge the January 2020 drone strike that killed Soleimani, who had long topped the State Department’s terrorist list.Who is the real terrorist? “Some time ago the president of the United States acknowledged that ISIS was created by the American government,” Mr. Raisi cryptically said. Iran, he insisted, combats terrorism, while America “wishes internally to have justice but then outside of its borders trains various terrorist groups on various nations.”On the other hand, “the leader who descended into the arena of the fight against terrorism was no one other than the beloved late martyr Qassem Soleimani,” Mr. Raisi said. The Iranian people and others in the region have “managed to heal some of the broken hearts” following the “crime” of Soleimani’s killing, Mr. Raisi said. Yet, he added, “We seek through a fair tribunal to bring to justice those who martyred General Soleimani.”Seeking legal means against former members of the Trump administration “supplements, rather than supplants, Tehran’s assassination and terror schemes against U.S. citizens and officials,” an Iran watcher at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Behnam Ben Taleblu, told the Sun. Mr. Raisi’s speech was filled with other assertions that contradict realities. He decried “the death of tens of thousands of innocent women around the world” even while in Iran the death toll rises in clashes between police and demonstrators following the killing of Mahsa Amini at the hand of morality enforcers. The young woman was arrested last week for improperly donning a mandatory Islamic head dress. Turning to the impasse over a renewal of the 2015 nuclear deal, Mr. Raisi said Iran “is not seeking to build nuclear weapons.” He then invoked a religious edict against nuclear weapons that was, he said, issued by the country’s top officials. While the edict was never made public, and many doubt it ever existed, Mr. Raisi claimed that “a fatwa is more valuable than any international agreement.” In the past American diplomats walked out of the UN hall when Iranian officials made outrageous statements. Today, the Israeli UN ambassador, Gilad Erdan, stormed out to protest Mr. Raisi’s Holocaust denial in a Sunday interview with CBS “60 Minutes.” The low-level American note taker, in contrast, remained in his seat during Mr. Raisi’s entire speech. President Biden in his speech to the General Assembly dedicated only a couple of short sentences to the Islamic Republic, saying that “we stand with the brave citizens and the brave women of Iran who right now are demonstrating to secure their basic rights.” America also “will not allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon,” Mr. Biden said, adding, “we continue to believe diplomacy is the best way to reach this outcome.”That diplomacy is currently at an impasse, but it is the likely reason that Mr. Biden neglected to address Tehran’s threats against American citizens on American soil. It is also part of the reason America allowed entry to Mr. Raisi to begin with. “Why Biden permitted a sanctioned Iranian leader onto U.S. soil, and especially after the brutal killing of Mahsa Amini and protests since, is mind boggling,” Mr. Ben Taleblu said.

Iranian Leader Uses UN Speech To Level More Threats Against America

More from the New York Sun

The 82nd Whitney Biennial Masters the Art of Ideological Grandstanding

Trump Formally Names Kevin Warsh To Head Federal Reserve, but Nomination Faces Uncertain Future

The Battle Over Polygamy Begins

Drill, Baby, Drill

Unprecedented Ties Between the American and Israeli Armed Forces Can Hasten Victory in the Iran War

Trump Calls for Jack Smith To ‘Be Brought to Justice’ as Outrage Grows at Surveillance of President’s Aides and GOP Senators

Republicans Back Trump’s Iran Strikes, Multiple Polls Show, Undercutting Fears of a MAGA ‘Civil War’

Spain Denies Any Involvement With America’s Strikes on Iran, Saying Commitment to ‘No War’ Is Absolute