Republicans Urge Biden to Deny Entry Visa for Iran’s Raisi

Republican Senator Tom Cotton during a senate session in March 2022. (AP)
Republican Senator Tom Cotton during a senate session in March 2022. (AP)
TT

Republicans Urge Biden to Deny Entry Visa for Iran’s Raisi

Republican Senator Tom Cotton during a senate session in March 2022. (AP)
Republican Senator Tom Cotton during a senate session in March 2022. (AP)

Several Republican senators have urged the US administration to deny visas for Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and his delegation to attend the United Nations General Assembly in New York City in September.

In a letter to US President Joe Biden, Senators Tom Cotton, Rick Scott, Marco Rubio, Chuck Grassley, Joni Ernst, Marsha Blackburn, and Ted Cruz said: “Raisi’s involvement in mass murder and the Iranian regime’s campaign to assassinate US officials on American soil make allowing Raisi and his henchmen to enter our country an inexcusable threat to national security.”

“If recent reports are true that Raisi plans to attend the UN General Assembly, the White House must deny Raisi and other Iranian officials visas to attend,” the senators stressed.

“Allowing Raisi to travel to the United States—while his agents actively work to assassinate senior American officials on US soil—would gravely endanger our national security, given the likely presence of Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) agents in the Iranian delegation,” the senators continued.

They further highlighted Raisi’s long-standing and clear record as a violator of human rights.

“In 1988, while deputy prosecutor of Tehran, Raisi served on a Death Commission which sentenced approximately 5,000 prisoners to death, including women and children, without the right to appeal or a fair trial,” the letter read, stressing that Raisi is proud of his record.

In 2018, he defended the commission, calling it “divine punishment” and “one of the proud achievements of the system.”

They said that Raisi’s role in these gross human rights abuses led the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) to sanction him in 2019.

“Granting a mass murderer like Raisi a visa to enter our country would also legitimize his repression. It is a risk we cannot and should not take,” the letter warned.

The letter recalled a report by Washington Examiner in March, stating that the Department of Justice had indictable evidence that IRGC Quds Force operatives were planning to assassinate former US National Security Adviser John Bolton.

It added that the IRGC has reportedly been plotting similar efforts against former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former CENTCOM Commander Kenneth McKenzie, and other former officials.

The US had previously refused to issue visas to Iranian officials to participate in the General Assembly meetings.

In 2014, then-President Barack Obama denied an entry visa to Iranian UN Ambassador Hamid Aboutalebi, who was involved in taking American diplomats hostage in 1979.

In 2020, Donald Trump declined to issue a visa for Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.



Landmine Victims Gather to Protest US Decision to Supply Ukraine

 Activists and landmine survivors hold placards against the US decision to supply anti-personnel landmines to Ukrainian forces amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine, during the Siem Reap-Angkor Summit on a Mine free World landmine conference in Siem Reap province on November 26, 2024. (AFP)
Activists and landmine survivors hold placards against the US decision to supply anti-personnel landmines to Ukrainian forces amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine, during the Siem Reap-Angkor Summit on a Mine free World landmine conference in Siem Reap province on November 26, 2024. (AFP)
TT

Landmine Victims Gather to Protest US Decision to Supply Ukraine

 Activists and landmine survivors hold placards against the US decision to supply anti-personnel landmines to Ukrainian forces amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine, during the Siem Reap-Angkor Summit on a Mine free World landmine conference in Siem Reap province on November 26, 2024. (AFP)
Activists and landmine survivors hold placards against the US decision to supply anti-personnel landmines to Ukrainian forces amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine, during the Siem Reap-Angkor Summit on a Mine free World landmine conference in Siem Reap province on November 26, 2024. (AFP)

Landmine victims from across the world gathered at a conference in Cambodia on Tuesday to protest the United States' decision to give landmines to Ukraine, with Kyiv's delegation expected to report at the meet.

More than 100 protesters lined the walkway taken by delegates to the conference venue in Siem Reap where countries are reviewing progress on the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Treaty.

"Look what antipersonnel landmines will do to your people," read one placard held by two landmine victims.

Alex Munyambabazi, who lost a leg to a landmine in northern Uganda in 2005, said he "condemned" the decision by the US to supply antipersonnel mines to Kyiv as it battles Russian forces.

"We are tired. We don't want to see any more victims like me, we don't want to see any more suffering," he told AFP.

"Every landmine planted is a child, a civilian, a woman, who is just waiting for their legs to be blown off, for his life to be taken.

"I am here to say we don't want any more victims. No excuses, no exceptions."

Washington's announcement last week that it would send anti-personnel landmines to Kyiv was immediately criticized by human rights campaigners.

Ukraine is a signature to the treaty. The United States and Russia are not.

Ukraine using the US mines would be in "blatant disregard for their obligations under the mine ban treaty," said Tamar Gabelnick, director of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.

"These weapons have no place in today´s warfare," she told AFP.

"[Ukraine's] people have suffered long enough from the horrors of these weapons."

A Ukrainian delegation was present at the conference on Tuesday, and it was expected to present its report on progress in clearing mines on its territory.