EXCLUSIVE: Iranian Regime Critics Demand Biden Deny Visa to ‘Butcher of Tehran’ President Raisi

Critics of the Islamic Republic of Iran called to deny a visa to Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi — dubbed the “Butcher of Tehran” —  following reports of his plans to travel to New York to attend the United Nations upcoming session, warning his attendance would “endanger national security,” serve to “appease terrorists,” and “reward the Iranian regime for its assassination and kidnapping attempts on Americans.”

In exclusive statements to Breitbart News, several notable critics of the Islamic theocracy spoke out after an Iranian government spokesman announced plans for Raisi to attend the 77th session of the U.N. General Assembly in New York next month, despite U.S. sanctions against him for “complicity in serious human rights violations.”

 “The preliminary planning has been done for the [Iranian] president’s attendance at the UN General Assembly session,” Ali Bahadori-Jahromi told a weekly press briefing.

Raisi, who once held a seat on the Central Committee of the nation’s “death commissions,” has an extensive record of ordering mass executions of opponents of the Islamic regime and is accused of involvement in a range of egregious human rights abuses, including the execution of thousands of political prisoners, including pregnant women and teenage girls.

Under Raisi’s watch, impunity was granted to security forces and government officials responsible for violent crackdowns on protests in 2019, when more than 1,000 protesters were killed. 

In addition, Raisi has appointed terrorists and anti-Western hardliners in top ministerial positions, including an interior minister wanted by Interpol for his role in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires as well as a foreign minister with close links to the Iranian-backed Hezbollah terror group.

Former GOP congressional candidate Bryan E. Leib who serves as executive director of Iranian Americans for Liberty (IAL), a bipartisan community of Iranian Americans working to aid those living under the oppressive Iranian regime, told Breitbart News that President Joe Biden should use the current circumstances to “send a clear message to the Khamenei Regime that President Raisi is not welcome on US soil” to speak at this year’s UN General Assembly.

“Just two weeks ago, Khamenei’s IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) threatened to kill millions of Americans by using nuclear weapons to ‘turn New York City into hellish ruins,’” Leib recalled.

Calling it the president’s “last chance” to “send a clear message to Tehran that we are not their allies and that we will not stand on the sidelines as they threaten to nuke American cities and endanger America’s strongest ally in the Middle East, the State of Israel,” the IAL director directed his next words to Biden himself:

“Enough is enough, Mr. President,” he said. “Stop appeasing terrorists and put Americans first!”

In a statement to Breitbart News, Lisa Daftari, editor-in-chief of The Foreign Desk, wondered just how the country could “let the same regime that threatens to blow up New York travel there freely to use the United Nations’ podium to spew more hateful remarks and make more threats towards the United States.”

The award-winning investigative journalist and Middle East expert recalled that in the last month alone, “Iran’s regime has threatened US officials including Mike Pompeo, Donald Trump and John Bolton, and it turns out the Revolutionary Guard was in contact with Salman Rushdie’s attacker.”

“What does that tell us?” she asked. “They’re not only making threats, but they’re in contact with individuals living here in the US willing to carry out their dirty work on our soil.”

According to Len Khodorkovsky, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State and Senior Advisor to the US Representative for Iran under former President Trump, Raisi — dubbed “the Butcher of Tehran” — has rightfully “earned his label.” 

“That’s why he is sanctioned by the US,” Khodorkovsky told Breitbart News. “There is no justification to grant him an entry visa to the US, which would not only serve to gloss over his grotesque record of human rights atrocities but reward the Iranian regime for its assassination and kidnapping attempts on Americans.”

National President of Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) Morton A. Klein warned that providing a visa to the “mass murderer Ayatollah Ebrahim Raisi and his delegation would endanger national security,” in a statement to Breitbart News, adding that it would also “send a terrible message that the international community still accepts those who threaten and attack Americans.”

“It is particularly concerning to grant a visa to Raisi so soon after a video on Iranian state media threatened to activate a nuclear weapon and use nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) to turn ‘New York into ruins and hell’ and ‘the West and Israel’s nightmare into a reality,’” he said. 

Klein, who heads America’s oldest pro-Israel organization, also noted that the move would be even more outrageous considering that Iran is currently “pursuing assassination plots against US residents and officials in New York and elsewhere in the country.”

On Sunday, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley slammed the “corrupt” international organization for even considering the move as Iranian terrorists “try to assassinate our officials — on our soil.”

Last week, she called on the Biden administration to prevent the Iranian president from attending next month’s assembly by denying him a visa.

Her appeal followed eight Republican senators, including Marco Rubio (FL), Tom Cotton (AR), and Ted Cruz (TX), who wrote to President Biden earlier in the month requesting he deny a visa to Raisi. 

The matter comes as a newspaper under the control of Iran’s Supreme Leader warned that former President Donald Trump and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo could soon be “next” for “divine revenge” over the assassination of IRGC commander Qassem Soleimani in 2020, as it lauded the recent attack on “apostate” author Salman Rushdie that left him with serious injuries.

The British-American author had been marked for death by the Iranian regime for decades, with the country’s then supreme theocratic leader Ayatollah Khomeini calling for “Muslims of the world rapidly to execute the author and the publishers of the book” so that “no one will any longer dare to offend the sacred values of Islam.”

Media in Iran have since celebrated the attack on the award-winning author.

The threats against the former president and secretary of state come only days after an Iranian national was charged for allegedly planning the assassination of former National Security Adviser John Bolton.

Shahram Poursafi, who is alleged by American security officials to be a member of Iran’s IRGC, is reported to have attempted to pay individuals up to $300,000 to kill Bolton, though Iranian officials have dismissed the claim.

In response, Bolton described himself as feeling “embarrassed” at the idea that Iran was only offering $300,000 for his life, with the former ambassador to the United Nations saying he thought he would have had a higher bounty on his head.

Additionally, Iranian state media published a video clip last month boasting of the regime’s nuclear capabilities, claiming it can — in a moment’s notice — “transform” its nuclear program into an “atomic military” one, creating a “nightmare” for Israel and the West, and warning of its “ability to turn New York into a heap of rubble from Hell.”

In June, former U.S. Vice President Mike Pence accused the Biden administration of threatening to “unravel all the progress” the Trump administration made in marginalizing the Iranian regime. 

He also blasted the Biden team’s concessions to the “tyrants” in Tehran, its “virtual abandonment of our ally Israel,” and the “disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan,” which have emboldened the “adversaries of freedom” that now sense “weakness” in the American administration.

Iran, the largest state sponsor of terrorism worldwide, claims its nuclear program is for energy purposes, but world leaders, including the six nations that joined the 2015 deal to limit Iran’s nuclear weapons capacity, say enriching uranium may lead to Iran’s ability to quickly create a nuclear weapon.

While the Obama-led nuclear deal — deemed fatally flawed and highly one-sided by many, from which then-President Donald Trump withdrew in 2018 — delineates an enrichment limit of 3.67 percent, Iran has been accused of violating the agreement as Tehran produces more enriched uranium.

In March, Russia’s envoy to the Iran nuclear talks admitted Tehran “got much more than it could expect” in the latest iteration of the nuclear deal.