Senators, experts urge Biden to deny Iran president visa ahead of UN General Assembly

Plans for Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi to attend the United Nations General Assembly in September, despite US sanctions, have both officials and experts calling for President Biden to deny the delegation any visas.

“The Biden administration has publicly acknowledged that the Tehran regime is actively plotting to kill Americans,” Richard Goldberg, a former National Security Council official and senior adviser to the Defense Foundation, told Fox News Digital. the Democracies. “How can they issue visas to those responsible for the plot? It would be fully consistent with US law and treaty obligations to deny visas to Raisi and his delegation on national security grounds.”

Iranian government spokesman Ali Bahadori Jahromi announced that the government has established preliminary plans for Raisi to attend the annual event, the first since he took office. The UN General Assembly will begin on September 13 in New York City, and the general debate will begin a week later. Raisi has drawn a plum word point on the second day of the debate.

The United States has accused Raisi, a close ally of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, of various human rights violations, including mass executions and a crackdown on political opponents. He took office on August 5, 2021, but did not attend last year’s General Assembly.

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US officials included Raisi on a list of Iranian officials sanctioned for human rights violations in 2019.

Iran’s presidential election candidate Ebrahim Raisi waves to the media after voting at a polling station in Tehran, Iran on June 18, 2021, the day of the Islamic republic’s presidential election. The country’s incumbent president, Hassan Rouhani, is ineligible to run again after serving two terms in office.
(Photo by Majid Saeedi/Getty Images)

A group of seven Republican senators, including Sens. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., Marco Rubio, R-Fla. and Ted Cruz, R-Texas, sent a letter to Biden on Tuesday urging him to deny visas for the Iranian delegation. prevent them from attending the UN General Assembly.

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“Raisi’s involvement in mass murder and the Iranian regime’s campaign to assassinate American officials on American soil make allowing Raisi and his henchmen into our country an inexcusable threat to national security.” , the senators wrote.

“If recent reports are true that Raisi plans to attend the United Nations General Assembly, the White House must deny visas to Raisi and other Iranian officials to attend,” the letter continued. “Allowing Raisi to travel to the United States, while his agents are actively working to assassinate senior American officials on American soil, would seriously endanger our national security, given the likely presence of IRGC operatives in the Iranian delegation”.

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Raisi has remained a key figure in discussions with the US on reviving the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), commonly known as the Iran Nuclear Deal. He has taken a tough stance on the negotiations, demanding that the United States lift sanctions before Tehran makes any adjustments, a point he repeated during his inaugural address.

In 2015, the UN passed Resolution 2231, which supported the “full and effective implementation” of the JCPOA.

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The U.S. left the JCPOA in 2018 as part of a “maximum pressure” campaign against Tehran, but U.S. officials maintained they were entitled under Resolution 2231 to a “snapback” clause to allow to an individual nation to reimpose all sanctions on Iran. .

Adam Shaw of Fox News contributed to this report.