Iran’s President Not Welcome in US, Should be Prosecuted for ‘Crimes Against Humanity’: Iranian Americans

Deceased Iranian leader Ebrahim Raisi while addressing parliament in Tehran, Iran, on Nov. 16, 2021. Raisi died in a chopper crash on May 19, 2024. Vahid Salemi/AP Photo

An ad-hoc group of more than five hundred Iranian-American scientists, academics, and professionals are calling on U.S. President Joe Biden to not only deny a visa for Iran’s president to enter the United State but for Ebrahim Raisi to be prosecuted for, “crimes against humanity and genocide,” according to a letter released by the group on Sept. 8.

In August, the government of Iran indicated that Raisi would seek an entry visa to the United States to attend the United Nations (U.N.) General Assembly in New York later this month. But a spokesman for the ad-hoc committee, Kazem Kazerounian, Iranian-American Dean of Engineering at the University of Connecticut, said that they are pleading with the Biden administration to take “strong and immediate actions to reflect that Raisi does not represent the people of Iran and, therefore, must be denied entry visa to the United States.”

In 1988, on the orders of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini, thousands of Iranians were executed in an extrajudicial massacre, some for nothing more than buying the wrong newspaper, Kazerounian said. According to multiple news reports, Raisi was on the “Tehran Death Committee” that sent as many as three thousand Iranians to their death for opposing the regime. Kazerounian told The Epoch Times that he himself, “had family members murdered in the 1988 massacre.”

Kazerounian said that this plea to Biden is not only for the signers of the letter, but an appeal “echoing the demand of all Iranian people.” He said that it is Biden’s duty as “president of the most powerful country in the world to stand up for freedom.”

Last month, the Justice Department unsealed an indictment for a member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Shahram Poursafi, for allegedly attempting to hiring an assassin to kill former White House national security advisor John Bolton. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was reportedly the second target of the assassination plot.

Pompeo in August joined others in calling for Raisi’s visa to be denied. “We worked for four years to deny Iranian terrorists the freedom to put Americans at risk,” Pompeo told the Washington Free Beacon.

Former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley also objected, telling Fox News, “Under no circumstances” should Raisi be granted a visa.

In a joint letter in early August, several Republican senators made their objections known to the White House. Among them, Sens. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), and others, stated, “Raisi’s involvement in mass murder and the Iranian regime’s campaign to assassinate U.S. officials on American soil make allowing Raisi and his henchmen to enter our country an inexcusable threat to national security.”

Another co-signer of the Sept. 8 Iranian-American letter, Firouz Daneshgari, a professor of surgery at Case Western Reserve University, said in a statement, “With this letter, we bring to the attention of the US president that he must not allow Raisi to use the UN podium at the UN; instead, the US should take lead at the UN to prosecute Raisi for crimes against humanity and genocide.”

A State Department spokesman told the Jewish News Service in August that the United States is “generally obligated under the United Nations Headquarters Agreement to facilitate travel” by U.N. member representatives.

Critics say that the Biden administration is downplaying the Iranian threat because it is engaged in an effort to rekindle the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPA), better known as the Iran Nuclear Deal. Those negotiations have been frustrated by Iran’s recalcitrance. Even so, critics have accused Biden of being too willing to give in to demands of the extremist Iranian regime.

The Interests Section of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the regime’s de facto consulate in Washington, was not available for comment.

The White House and the State Department have not responded to requests for comment by The Epoch Times.