Former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper argued at an international conference on the situation in the Middle East on Saturday that governments around the world should prevent the new Iranian president from being tracked down for human rights abuses.
The former politician’s comments were made during a virtual session of the 2021 World Summit for an Independent Iran.e The Prime Minister told the participants that the coming to power of Ibrahim Raisi was further evidence of the rise of terrorism in Iran.
The country’s chief justice is expected to officially take office next month. Raisi will be the first sitting Iranian president to be approved by the US government before taking office in 1988 for the mass execution of thousands of political prisoners.
“Ibrahim Raisi is a criminal, guilty of crimes against humanity. He is a living symbol of the madness that seeks to appease the regime (Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei),” Stephen Harper said in his brief speech.
“It would be a shame for any government in the world to sit down and try to negotiate anything with the administration led by Abraham Raisi,” he added.
Raisi, the Supreme Leader’s bodyguard, rose to become Iran’s highest-ranking citizen and saw a historically low turnout after being disqualified by a group led by its biggest rival, Khamenei.
Nuclear deal
Mr. Harper, the “Sham” election, shows how efforts to secure the 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran have only tarnished the image of extremist forces.
Harper, who served as Prime Minister of Canada from 2006 to 2015, said, “All so-called moderate candidatures have been dismissed. The government I have led has never been disappointed by the claim that there is a moderate phantom faction.”
Stephen Harper, a Conservative government that severed diplomatic ties with Iran in 2012, has been a vocal critic of the nuclear deal.
The liberals of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau backed the deal, which restricts Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons in exchange for the lifting of some sanctions.
However, the nuclear deal was torpedoed in 2018 when former US President Donald Trump announced the withdrawal of the United States. Harper publicly supported.
The return of President Joe Biden and his delegation to the United States is one of their top foreign policy priorities.
However, hopes that the deal would be renewed and expanded soon after the referendum on the nomination of Ibrahim Raisi as President-elect of Iran have been dashed.
Raisi turned down the opportunity to meet with Pita or start talks on Tehran’s ballistic missile program and support for regional militants.
With the Associated Press
