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)
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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.



Russia Advances in Ukraine at Fastest Monthly Pace Since Start of War, Analysts Say

A police officer drives a vehicle past burning trees during an evacuation of civilians from the outskirts of the Kurakhove town, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Donetsk region, Ukraine September 16, 2024. (Reuters)
A police officer drives a vehicle past burning trees during an evacuation of civilians from the outskirts of the Kurakhove town, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Donetsk region, Ukraine September 16, 2024. (Reuters)
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Russia Advances in Ukraine at Fastest Monthly Pace Since Start of War, Analysts Say

A police officer drives a vehicle past burning trees during an evacuation of civilians from the outskirts of the Kurakhove town, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Donetsk region, Ukraine September 16, 2024. (Reuters)
A police officer drives a vehicle past burning trees during an evacuation of civilians from the outskirts of the Kurakhove town, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Donetsk region, Ukraine September 16, 2024. (Reuters)

Russian forces are advancing in Ukraine at the fastest rate since the early days of the 2022 invasion, taking an area half the size of Greater London over the past month, analysts and war bloggers say.

The war is entering what some Russian and Western officials say could be its most dangerous phase after Moscow's forces made some of their biggest territorial gains and the United States allowed Kyiv to strike back with US missiles.

"Russia has set new weekly and monthly records for the size of the occupied territory in Ukraine," independent Russian news group Agentstvo said in a report.

The Russian army captured almost 235 sq km (91 sq miles) in Ukraine over the past week, a weekly record for 2024, it said.

Russian forces had taken 600 sq km (232 sq miles) in November, it added, citing data from DeepState, a group with close links to the Ukrainian army that studies combat footage and provides frontline maps.

Russia began advancing faster in eastern Ukraine in July just as Ukrainian forces carved out a sliver of its western region of Kursk. Since then, the Russian advance has accelerated, according to open source maps.

Russia's forces are moving into the town of Kurakhove, a stepping stone towards the logistical hub of Pokrovsk in Donetsk, and have been exploiting the vulnerabilities of Kyiv troops along the frontline, analysts said.

"Russian forces recently have been advancing at a significantly quicker rate than they did in the entirety of 2023," analysts at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said in a report.

The General Staff of Ukraine's armed forces said in its Monday update that 45 battles of varying intensity were raging along the Kurakhove part of the frontline that evening.

The Institute for the Study of War report and pro-Russian military bloggers say Russian troops are in Kurakhove. Deep State said on its Telegram messaging app on Monday that Russian forces are near Kurakhove.

"Russian forces' advances in southeastern Ukraine are largely the result of the discovery and tactical exploitation of vulnerabilities in Ukraine's lines," Institute analysts said in their report.

Russia says it will achieve all of its aims in Ukraine no matter what the West says or does.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has repeatedly said peace cannot be established until all Russian forces are expelled and all territory captured by Moscow, including Crimea, is returned.

But outnumbered by Russian troops, the Ukrainian military is struggling to recruit soldiers and provide equipment to new units.

Zelenskiy has said he believed Russian President Vladimir Putin's main objectives were to occupy the entire Donbas, spanning the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, and oust Ukrainian troops from the Kursk region, parts of which they have controlled since August.