(PatriotPostNews.com) – The US State Department on Monday offered the US’s official condolences to Iran on the death of President Ebrahim Raisi.
The 63-year-old Raisi, whose nickname was “The Butcher of Tehran,” was killed on Sunday along with seven others when his Bell helicopter crashed into a mountainside in heavy fog near the border with Azerbaijan.
Also killed in the crash were Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian and the governor of Iran’s East Azerbaijan province, along with other members of Raisi’s delegation and the crew.
In a May 20 statement, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller expressed the United States’ “official condolences” for the deaths of Raisi, Amirabdollahian, and the others, and expressed the US government’s support “for the Iranian people and their struggle for human rights and fundamental freedoms.
Republican lawmakers blasted the State Department for expressing official condolences on the death of the Butcher of Tehran.
Republican Rep. Tom Emmer, the House Majority Whip, condemned the statement as “absurd” for its expression of support for human rights while offering condolences for Raisi.
Emmer said in a post on X that the modern Democratic Party “has become the pro-terrorist party.”
House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (R-NY) also slammed the Biden administration for offering official condolences to a man “who tortured and killed his own people” and helped to fund proxy groups that have killed US servicemembers around the world.
In Monday’s State Department press briefing, Miller defended the statement, arguing that the United States also issued official condolences for the deaths of Josef Stalin and Venezuela’s former Socialist President Hugo Chavez.
During an interview following Sunday’s crash, Iran’s former Foreign Minister, Javad Zarif, accused the United States of being responsible for the crash that killed Raisi, saying that the US sanctions imposed on Iran prevented the country from purchasing newer aircraft. Zarif said Sunday’s helicopter crash would be included on the list of the US’s “crimes against the Iranian people.”
On Monday, the United Nations Security Council held a moment of silence in honor of the Butcher of Tehran.
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