"Bearing in mind the horrific acts in which he was involved as a judge and president, and the fact that he cannot be involved in them in the slightest, yes, the Iranian people are probably better off… We are definitely not grieving over his death." he said when asked by Senator Ted Cruz if "the world is a better place now that Raisi is dead."
Blinken said the US does not mourn Raisi's passing and would not declare a moment of silence at the UN in his memory.
At the same time, the State Department issued condolences on the death of the Iranian president the previous day.
The helicopter carrying Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, Foreign Minister Hosein Amir Abdollahian and other officials crashed on 19 May in the north-west of the country in the Verzegan region. The delegation was returning from a visit to Azerbaijan, where Raisi and his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev participated in the opening ceremony of the Giz Galasi and Khudaferin hydroelectric complexes on the Araks border river.