Blinken Justifies Offering Condolences to Raisi as Standard Procedure

Secretary of State Antony Blinken defended the Biden administration’s statement expressing official condolences for the death of the President of Iran as “a normal course of business.”

During his testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., questioned Blinken about the State Department’s decision to issue a statement expressing condolences for the deaths of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, Foreign Minister Amir-Abdollahian, and others in a helicopter crash over the weekend.

Barrasso and others criticized the department for issuing the statement due to the human rights abuses perpetrated by Iran’s government.

“Yesterday, the State Department issued a statement mourning the death of the Iranian president,” Barrasso said. “I assume as secretary you share that sentiment?”

Blinken responded, “We expressed official condolences, as we’ve done when countries, adversaries, enemies or not, have lost leaders. It changes nothing about the fact that Mr. Raisi was engaged in reprehensible conduct, including repressing his own people for many years as a judge.”

He added that the statement “changes not a whit about our policy but it’s something that we’ve done many times in the past, going back many administrations and many decades, and we do as a normal course of business.”