Comment
DOUGLAS MURRAY
Why do the UN and BBC mourn ‘Butcher of Tehran’ who hated the West and hanged rape victims?
Why should we have any respect for a man who wanted to start a massive war in the Middle East throughout his entire life?
THE President of Iran died at the weekend in a helicopter accident – news that the BBC marked with the headline “President Ebrahim Raisi’s mixed legacy in Iran”.
“Mixed legacy” is an interesting way to sum up the life of someone better known as the “Butcher of Tehran”.
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Raisi rose through the ranks of the revolutionary Islamic Government that overthrew the Shah in 1979.
And he made his name in the usual revolutionary Islamic way.
By killing his political opponents — including the leftists who the regime rounded up, imprisoned and murdered by the thousands in their jails.
Some of the obituaries have noted that Raisi helped speed up the backlog of trials in Iran.
That is true. He did it in the same way Stalin did — by killing his opponents fast.
The United Nations noted his passing in its own unique way.
At the Security Council, the member States were invited to stand and observe a minute’s silence for Raisi.
Those taking part shamefully included our own deputy ambassador to the UN, James Kariuki.
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At the same time, Iranians were letting off fireworks and handing out sweets in their own streets.
There has been more mourning at the United Nations than there has been in Iran.
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Perhaps that is because the Iranian people are the first ones who have had to suffer under the cruel rule of President Raisi.
It was on his watch that students and others who have protested against his regime have been abducted, tortured and killed.
It is Raisi’s regime which has overseen the harshest rule of Islamic law — which includes the hanging of women who have been raped.
That’s right. If you are a woman who has been raped in Iran, you are the culprit.
And you will be the one that is hanged.
Are the women who suffered that horror worth a minute’s silence at the UN? I would have said so.
Is their hangman? I’d have said not. Yet the UN and others continued with this gross spectacle.
Today, the organisation flew its flags at half-mast at its HQ in New York.
How morally sick can an organisation be?
We seem to have come to the stage where international bodies, as well as some sick people at home, will love anyone so long as that person hates us.
And Raisi and his foreign minister, who died with him, certainly did hate us.
Theirs is a regime which has, for 44 years, called for “Death to America” and “Death to the UK”.
It is a regime which has caused a numberless loss of lives inside Iran and in the wider region.
It is a regime which has been trying to expand its power in its own region and whose assassins have made it as far as New York and London.
Only last month, a member of the Iranian opposition was stabbed outside his house in London.
Almost certainly by assassins sent to the UK by the government in Iran.
All the time, Raisi and his friends have tried to make their regime invincible by gaining a nuclear weapon.
So far they have had that project delayed many times.
But they still seek the bomb and are one of the very few regimes on Earth that has said they would like to use it.
We should take them at their word.
It is the regime in Iran that has, for years, funded and trained terrorists across the region and indeed the world.
‘Mass slaughter’
In October last year, when Hamas terrorists broke into Israel and carried out the largest mass slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, it was Iran which backed them.
It is Iran that has funded Hamas. It is Iran that has trained Hamas. And it is Iran that has armed Hamas.
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Just as they have also trained, funded and armed their other terrorist groups.
Notably in Yemen. Where Iran’s Houthi friends have fired missiles and attacked British ships.
But also in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, where Iran’s weapons have killed British and American soldiers.
And that is before even getting on to the 150,000 missiles Iran has helped Hezbollah store up in southern Lebanon.
Or the drones and other munitions it has been giving to Vladimir Putin’s Russia as he tries to overrun Ukraine.
All of his foul life, Raisi hoped to start and win a massive regional war.
Why should the man who oversaw all this and very much more be given any respect?
You might say it makes political sense to keep doors open — as most of our Foreign Office seems to think.
But it is quite another thing to mourn, or lament, the passing of this man.
The BBC, Foreign Office and United Nations may not know what a tyrant is. But the Iranian people do.
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If only we could show that we are on their side.
We could start by showing that we are also on our own.