WASHINGTON - The United States won’t issue a visa for an Iranian diplomat linked to the group that took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979, President Barack Obama’s spokesman said Friday.
“We have informed the United Nations and Iran that we will not issue a visa” to Hamid Aboutalebi, who was Iran’s choice for its next ambassador to the U.N., White House press secretary Jay Carney said. “The selection was not viable.”
The U.S. refusal brings to a head the standoff over Iran’s U.N. envoy, which comes amid delicate negotiations over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear development program. Carney said the decision won’t affect the nuclear talks with Iran, which also involve Russia,China, the United Kingdom, France and Germany.
Hamid Babaei, spokesman for the Iranian mission to the U.N., in an email called the U.S. decision “regrettable” and said it was “in contravention of international law, the obligation of the host country and the inherent right of sovereign member states to designate their representatives to the United Nations.”
He didn’t elaborate on any steps Iran might take.
Without a U.S. visa, Aboutalebi would not be allowed to enter the United States. Iran could nominate a different ambassador or have Aboutalebi occupy the post from overseas.
The U.S. decision follows votes by the House and Senate to bar Aboutalebi from the United States. Carney would not say Friday whether Obama would sign that bill, but he said the president shared its sentiments.
“We are reviewing the legislation and will work to address any issues related to its utility and its constitutionality,” Carney said.
That bill doesn’t mention Aboutalebi by name. Instead, it would deny admission to the U.S. “to any representative to the United Nations who has engaged in espionage activities against the United States, poses a threat to United States national security interests, or has engaged in a terrorist activity against the United States.”
Aboutalebi, who previously served as Iran’s ambassador to Australia, Belgium and Italy, has been tied to a student group that led the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979 and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. The U.S. responded to the takeover by breaking diplomatic ties with Iran.
Aboutalebi, 56, has insisted his involvement in the group Muslim Students Following the Imam’s Line was limited to translation and negotiation.
Carney and State Department spokesman Jen Psaki declined to say explicitly why the visa was denied. However, Carney said the issues raised in the congressional legislation and reports about Aboutalebi “reflect our views.”
The administration’s decision to block Aboutalebi’s nomination drew praise from both parties, including from Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, the chief sponsor of the congressional legislation. In an interview with Fox News, Cruz said he appreciated the president “doing the right thing and barring this acknowledged terrorist from coming into the country.”
Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said allowing Aboutalebi into the U.S. “would have been a slap at all American victims of terrorism, not just those taken hostage in 1979. We’re glad the Obama administration made this choice, and Iran should stop playing these games.”
U.N. officials had no immediate comment on the U.S. decision.
Although the U.S. is obliged to grant entry visas to representatives of member states under the United Nations Headquarters Agreement Act approved by Congress in 1947, the U.S. president can deny visas to individuals deemed to pose a security threat to the U.S.
The agreement says the terms are applicable “irrespective of the relations existing between the Governments of the persons referred to in that section and the Government of the United States.”
Some of the same legal questions came up in 2005 when Iran applied for a visa for then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to address the U.N.
The Department of Homeland Security initially found Ahmadinejad ineligible for a visa to enter the U.S. because of suspicions that he, too, participated in the embassy seizure, but the State Department granted it months later after interviewing former hostages.
Because Iran doesn’t have an embassy in the U.S., its U.N. envoy is its most senior diplomat in the country.
Although the U.S. has previously denied visas for diplomats seeking short-term visits to attend meetings at U.N. headquarters in New York, U.N. officials and diplomats said they do not recall the U.S. barring entry for an envoy appointed to lead a mission at the international body.
Iran’s Fars News Agency reported Sept. 22, 2012, that the U.S. denied entry visas for20 Iranian officials seeking to attend a session of the U.N. General Assembly.
In 1988, the U.S. denied a visa for Yasser Arafat, then-chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, who wanted to speak before the U.N. General Assembly on the issue of Palestinian statehood.
The U.S. government barred Arafat’s entry because he “knows of, condones and lends support” to acts of terrorism, it said at the time. The General Assembly session was moved to Geneva, where there are no such visa-issuance constraints.
The U.S. and Iran have been inching toward repairing ties broken after the embassy takeover. Obama called his Iranian counterpart, Hassan Rouhani, when the Iranian president was in New York last year for the opening of the U.N. General Assembly. It was the first direct contact between the leaders of the U.S. and Iran in decades.
One of the major goals of Obama’s foreign policy has been reaching an agreement that would curb Iran’s nuclear development program. The U.S. and its allies contend Iran is moving toward the capability to build a nuclear weapon, which Iran denies.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told a Senate panel this week that it would take Iran two months to produce enough fissile material for one nuclear weapon.
A six-month interim agreement reached between the six-nation negotiating group and Iran ends in July. Diplomats have been meeting in Vienna on the next stage of the agreement. Among the issues being discussed are how sanctions on Iran would be lifted under a prospective accord. The international sanctions have been crippling Iran’s economy.
Officials said Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman, the chief U.S. negotiator in the nuclear talks, informed Iranian officials involved in discussions in Vienna this week about the visa decision. The White House said the negotiations are still expected to continue.
Information for this article was contributed by Margaret Talev, Sangwon Yoon, Derek Wallbank and Roger Runningen of Bloomberg News; by Julie Pace, Peter Spielmann, Matthew Lee, Lara Jakes and Donna Cassata of The Associated Press; and by Christi Parsons of the Tribune Washington Bureau.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 04/12/2014