The Biden Administration had an opportunity to take a stand for moral clarity and against terrorism on the world stage earlier this week.

It blew the chance, and instead joined members of the United Nations in honoring Ebrahim Raisi, former president of Iran, aka “The Butcher of Tehran” who died in a helicopter crash.

At the request of Russia, China, and Algeria, representatives – including United States Deputy Ambassador to the U.N. Robert Wood – stood at the U.N. Security Council for a minute to honor Raisi Monday.

It’s not as though the U.S. was unaware of Raisi’s track record.

As Fox News reported, State Department spokesperson Matt Miller said “we have been quite clear that Ebrahim Raisi was a brutal participant in the repression of the Iranian people for nearly four decades.”

He noted Raisi’s involvement in “numerous horrific human rights abuses, including playing a key role in the extrajudicial killing of thousands of political prisoners in 1988.”

“Some of the worst human rights abuses occurred during his tenure as president, especially the human rights abuses against the women and girls of Iran,” Miller said, but qualified: “That said, we regret any loss of life. We don’t want to see anyone die in a helicopter crash. But that doesn’t change the reality of his record, both as a judge and as the president of Iran.”

You can earn the nickname of “Butcher” and back terrorist groups, but sudden accidental death wipes the slate clean?

The rush to justify continued. A senior adviser to the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. told Fox News Digital that it “is (the) diplomatic norm to stand for moments of silence in the Security Council and by no means represents any honor or tribute to a man whose repression and brutality the U.S. consistently countered in that very room.”

What is a moment of silence if not a tribute?

Israeli U.N. Ambassador Gilad Erdan called the moment of silence in memory of “mass murdering” Raisi a “disgrace.”

It’s typical of Beltway Bubble doublespeak: we are firmly against terrorism, except when we funnel money to a terrorist regime and honor those in power.

We assert Israel’s right to defend itself, but only if no one gets hurt.

And we’ll assert that China is a threat to America, guilty of human rights abuses, but if it plays ball on fighting change, that’s what really counts.

That was the stance of former climate czar John Kerry, who visited Beijing last summer for discussions on global warming.  As the New York Times reported, Kerry stressed that the United States and China should be able to cooperate on climate change even as they wrangled with other disputes.

“This is not a political issue,” said Kerry. “This is not a bilateral issue or an ideological issue. This is real life unfolding before our eyes as a consequence of the choices we make or don’t make.”

There will be consequence for many choices the U.S. makes regarding China.

Progress on climate change doesn’t negate nor camouflage political conflicts, nor does an accidental death of a leader erase his murderous past.

The Biden Administration can’t straddle the fence.

Editorial cartoon by Steve Kelley (Creators Syndicate)

.