With massive protests growing in the streets of his capital thanks to growing resistance to the country’s conservative religious theocracy, Iran’s leader Ebrahim Raisi has flown thousands of miles away to New York where he will rub shoulders with foreign leaders amid a session of the UN General Assembly.
The Iranian leader arrived in the US this week ahead of his expected address to the body despite calls from Iranian-American proponents, as well as their allies on Capitol Hill, to ban Mr Raisi from travelling to the US due to his role in past killings of dissidents. Mr Raisi is accused of overseeing the mass killings of more than 5,000 political opponents of Iran’s regime in the 1980s, where as many as nine in ten victims were members of the Mujahedin e-Khalq (MEK).
