The United States said on Monday that it had denied a visa to Iran’s foreign minister to travel to Washington last week, due to Tehran’s behavior and “support for terrorism.”
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Press reports stated that Iranian Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian wanted to go to the Iranian consular interests section in Washington, after participating in the work of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
“They made this request and the State Department rejected it,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said when asked about this during his daily press conference.
Diplomatic relations between the United States and Iran have been cut off since the 1979 revolution.
“We have an obligation to allow Iranian and other foreign government officials to travel to New York to conduct UN-related business. But we are not obligated to allow them to go to Washington,” Matthew Miller said.
Such a visit by an Iranian foreign minister to Washington was the first in 14 years.
The spokesman justified the decision to refuse the visa “in light of Iran’s unjustified detention of American citizens and Iran’s support for terrorism.”
However, Iran and the United States conducted a rare prisoner exchange last week, facilitated by the release of $6 billion in Iranian oil revenues frozen in South Korea.
However, the head of US diplomacy, Antony Blinken, in recent days has tempered expectations that this exchange could lead to broader discussions, for example about Iranian nuclear energy.
