Ebrahim Raisi, the newly minted President of Iran refuses to meet with Joe Biden. That was one of several jaw-dropping and troubling answers he gave during an hour-long press conference.

Iran’s president-elect said Monday he would not meet with President Joe Biden or negotiate over Tehran’s ballistic missile program and its support of regional militias, sticking to a hard-line position following his landslide victory in last week’s election.

Raisi is the same guy who, as Legal Insurrection points out, is being touted as the new “savior” of the Iran Deal.

CNN is here to tell us that this guy is a “conservative.”

“Conservative” in this case means a guy who chaired a commission in the 1980’s that saw over 5,000 people killed after an Iraqi-led attack on Iran. 

“I am proud of being a defender of human rights and of people’s security and comfort as a prosecutor wherever I was,” he said. “All actions I carried out during my office were always in the direction of defending human rights.”

He added: “Today in the presidential post, I feel obliged to defend human rights.”

Iran as a defender of human rights?? Raisi a defender of human rights?? That’s quite a load of horseshit he is peddling, and the world press is swallowing that hook, line, and sinker 

The New York Times posted a glowing report two days ago. 

Iran’s announcement on Saturday that an ultraconservative former head of the judiciary, Ebrahim Raisi, has been elected president now touches off an unpredictable diplomatic drama: The ascension of a hard-line government in Iran may actually present the Biden administration with a brief opportunity to restore the 2015 nuclear deal with the country.

President Biden’s top aides, who have been negotiating with Iranian officials behind closed doors in Vienna — passing messages from hotel rooms through European intermediaries because the Iranians will not meet them directly — believe the moment may have come. And, they say, the next six weeks before Mr. Raisi is inaugurated present a unique window to strike a final deal with Iran’s leadership on a painful decision it has been delaying.

Read the above again. The talks regarding the Iran Deal have been on-going this spring…but Iran and now Raisi refuses to meet IN PERSON with anyone from the Biden Administration! 

Hello??!! Paging the clueless wonders at the Biden White House! Do ANY of you realize that Iran’s refusal to negotiate IN PERSON is one giant RED FLAG?? They are totally fine meeting with those from the UK, Germany, and France face to face…but NOT the United States??

I tell you what, if that had happened during the Trump Administration, the plug would’ve been pulled. Oh wait, President Trump KNEW the Iran Deal was bad from the get go, KNEW that Iran would never and unequivocally didn’t plan to adhere to any part of the Obama Iran Deal, and thus pulled the plug. 

But the Biden Administration is just fine with Iran dictating the terms of the negotiations? No wonder Raisi refuses to meet with Biden, he knows this is all just a freaking game with Iran holding the winning hand!

Q: How important it is to revive JCPOA? What’s your msg for US & EU?
Raisi: The US has to lift all sanctions & return to its commitments. EU shouldn’t be pressured by US policies, they must follow their commitments. This is people’s demand from the gov to restore nation’s rights

— Omer Carmi (@CarmiOmer) June 21, 2021

Did you catch that? The only negotiations Iran wants is for the U.S. to completely cave and hand over all the keys …and likely any and all remaining pallets of cash they deem necessary, even if the money never belonged to Iran in the first place.

The U.S. has already caved on some of the issues. 

The Biden administration lifted sanctions on three former Iranian officials and several energy companies amid stalled nuclear negotiations, signaling Washington’s willingness to further ease economic pressure on Iran if the country changes course.

The U.S. Treasury Department on Thursday repealed sanctions on former senior National Iranian Oil Co. officials and several companies involved in shipping and trading petrochemical products. The administration described the moves as routine administrative actions, saying the officials were removed from U.S. blacklists because they no longer held positions in the sanctioned entities.

Quite frankly, the sanctions should’ve stayed in place. Those officials were bad actors then, and are bad actors now. Furthermore, even as Iran lost one of their major warships after it mysteriously caught fire and sank, they are still working to build nuclear weapons and propping up Venezuela while thumbing their noses at the United States. 

Not sure how many times Republicans need to say and do this, but the only way the Ayatollah can get his assurances is if the catastrophic nuclear deal he's working on with Team Biden is passed by the Senate as a treaty. https://t.co/4nbaXyaSHv

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) June 20, 2021

There was a reason the Senate didn’t pass the FIRST Iran Deal, and that’s because A. they knew it was a bad deal, and B. some Senators realized that Iran never had any intentions of adhering to that deal. 

Raisi’s refusal to meet with Biden signals the very same thing. Iran wants the deal their way and their way only. 

The U.S. foreign policy is in the toilet. We saw that front and center as Biden bumbled and mumbled his way across Europe. It’s being further emphasized by Iran’s President Raisi refusing to meet with Biden and declaring himself a champion of human rights. 

The next three and a half years of Biden/Harris are going to be a long, bumpy, and dangerous ride. Thanks Democrats. You are building this. 

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Feature Photo Credit: Ebrahim Raisi from Ali Khamenei website via Wikimedia Commons, cropped and modified