Senators want Biden to deny Iran entry visas to attend UN General Assembly

WASHINGTON – Six Republicans senators sent a letter to President Joe Biden this past week calling on him to deny entry visas to Iranian President-elect  Ebrahim Raisi and other senior Iranian officials who wish to attend the UN General Assembly in September.

The six are: Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Ted Cruz (R-TX), and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.).

Raisi will take office on Thursday as Iran’s president. They noted in their letter that the US assigned to him responsibility as head of Iran’s judiciary for “facilitating the Supreme Leader of Iran’s tyrannical agenda, where he oversaw the state’s crackdown and murder of non-violent protesters.”

“In 2019, the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated Raisi, pursuant to Executive Order 13876, for his oversight over the executions of juveniles, torture, and other cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of Iranian prisoners, including amputations,” the letter reads.

“Ebrahim Raisi should remain sanctioned under US law,” the senators wrote in their letter. “If the United Nations General Assembly maintains its current plans to allow some in-person attendance, the White House should deny Raisi and other Iranian leaders visas to attend.”

“Allowing Raisi to travel to the United States, to the same city where the Iranian regime just tried to kidnap a US citizen,would legitimize his repression, undermine America’s moral leadership, and potentially endanger our national security, given the likely presence of intelligence agents in the Iranian traveling party,” the letter reads.

They went on to write that there is a precedent for denying an entry visa to a foreign leader.

“In 1988, the United States barred PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat from entering the United States to attend a meeting of the United Nations,” they wrote. “In 2014, President Obama denied an entry visa to Iranian Ambassador Hamid Aboutalebi, who was involved in taking American diplomats hostage in 1979. In 2020, the United States declined to issue a visa for Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif. Ebrahim Raisi’s role in the Death Commissions, brutal crackdowns on Iranian protesters, and his association with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps should disqualify him from receiving a visa to the United States.”