The US State Department announced that it will grant a visa to Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi ahead of the UN General Assembly that will open in New York on September 13, despite the fact that an indictment was recently filed against a member of the Revolutionary Guards who was captured in the US, attributing to him a plan to assassinate the advisor Former National Security Advisor John Bolton.
The State Department's announcement came at a particularly sensitive time for the United States, while in Washington they were waiting for the Iranian answer regarding the proposal that was forwarded to Tehran regarding the return to the nuclear agreement. At the same time, last week an attempt was made to assassinate the author Salman Rushdie in New York state, by a Muslim who is suspected of being In direct contact with Iran's Revolutionary Guards through social networks.
At the beginning of the month, after the details about the Bolton assassination plan that did not come to fruition were revealed, seven Republican senators sent a letter to President Biden in which they demanded that he not issue a visa to Raisi and the members of the Iranian delegation who are supposed to accompany him.
In their letter, the senators even referred to Raisi's past involvement in mass executions on behalf of the regime in Iran, and claimed that in light of the information about him, "his entry into the US would pose a threat to national security."
Many reports also attributed to the Revolutionary Guards concrete plans to try to assassinate other American officials, including former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and former State Department Special Envoy to Iran, Brian Hawke.
The former US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, also called on Biden not to grant visas to the members of the Iranian delegation, saying in an interview with the Fox News network that "under no circumstances should the administration allow Raisi to set foot on our country."
Nikki Haley during her term as ambassador to the United Nations // Photo: AFP,
There are precedents for withholding visas from leaders who wish to attend the UN General Assembly in New York starting in 1998, when the Reagan administration refused to issue a visa to Yasser Arafat on the grounds that, due to his being the leader of a terrorist organization, he posed a danger to US national security.
In 2014, President Obama also denied the visa request of Iran's ambassador-designate to the United Nations, and President Trump did not grant a visa to Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif in 2020.
However, the State Department has now responded that according to its arrangement with the United Nations regarding the location of the organization's headquarters in New York, it is obligated to issue visas to representatives of member states. A State Department spokesperson told the Jewish news site JNS that "we take our obligation to the agreement with the UN seriously, but at the same time the Biden administration will not make any concessions regarding the protection of American citizens of any kind against threats of terrorism and violence."
Raisi has been under US sanctions since November 2019, after it was determined that he "took part in serious violations of human rights".
According to the Americans, he played a central role in the mass executions that took place in Iran in 1988, while serving as the chief prosecutor of the Islamic Revolutionary Court in Tehran.
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