State Department Offers Condolences After Death of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi

The U.S. State Department issued a statement offering condolences to Iran after the death of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, also known as the “Butcher of Tehran.”

State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement on Monday that the U.S. “expresses its official condolences” for the death of Raisi, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, and other officials who had been on board a helicopter that had crashed in a mountainous region of Iran on Sunday.

“The United States expresses its official condolences for the death of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, Foreign Minister Amir-Abdollahian, and many other members of their delegation in a helicopter crash in northwest Iran,” the statement said.

“As Iran selects a new president, we reaffirm our support for the Iranian people and their struggle for human rights and fundamental freedoms,” the U.S. State Department continued.

Raisi had served as the president of Iran since 2021. While Raisi had served as a prosecutor in 1988, he had been part of a “death commission” panel and is believed to have presided over as many as 5,000 to 30,000 executions of peaceful dissidents.

While serving as president of Iran, Raisi oversaw mass executions and the Iranian regime’s numerous human rights violations.

The U.S. State Department issued a report in 2023 detailing Iran’s human rights violations, which included “arbitrary or unlawful killings by the government and its agents,” torture, inhuman and cruel treatments, “life-threatening prison conditions,” restrictions on freedom of expression, and restrictions of religious freedom, corruption of government, and early or forced child marriages, among many others.

Other human rights violations included the “unlawful recruitment or use of child soldiers” and the allowance of abuse by terrorist groups.

Additionally, Iran remained the world’s largest international state sponsor of terrorism while Raisi was president.

It has been largely known that the Iranian regime has funded and armed Hamas, the U.S.-designated Islamic terror group that launched an attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, leaving 1,200 people murdered and more than 250 people taken as hostages.

Iranian search teams announced on Monday that they had discovered the location of the helicopter crash. Officials revealed that there was “no sign” of life, according to Iran’s state television, the Times of Israel reported.

The Times of Israel reported that Iran’s Mehr news agency had revealed that Raisi had died as a result of the helicopter crash, adding that he had been “martyred”:

“The president of the Islamic Republica of Iran, Ayatollah Ebrahim Raisi, had an accident while serving and performing his duty for the people of Iran and was martyred,” Iran’s Mehr agency says as other media outlets also reported the news.

Even before Raisi’s death was confirmed, people and opposition groups in Iran were setting off fireworks and celebrating Raisi’s death.