wrote<\/a>.<\/p>\n\u201cShe is also an outspoken supporter of the Iranian regime who celebrated attacks on Americans and referred to our country as the \u2018Great Satan\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
The State Department also highlighted Soleimani Afshar\u2019s \u201clavish lifestyle\u201d in Los Angeles in its statement. As part of the decision, Soleimani Afshar\u2019s husband is also barred from entering the US.<\/p>\n
Public pressure to remove relatives of Iran\u2019s officials<\/h2>\n
According to the State Department, similar action was taken this month against Fatemeh Ardeshir-Larijani, the daughter of the late Ali Larijani, formerly the head of Iran\u2019s Supreme National Security Council.<\/p>\n
She and her husband Seyed Kalantar Motamedi saw their legal US immigration status revoked, and they were subsequently barred from re-entering the country.<\/p>\n
Larijani, one of the senior-most figures in the Iranian government, was killed in an Israeli air strike on March 17, as part of the ongoing war.<\/p>\n
Soleimani, meanwhile, was assassinated in January 2020 in a US drone attack outside Baghdad International Airport during Trump\u2019s first term in office.<\/p>\n
The removal of Larijani\u2019s and Soleimani\u2019s relatives from the US follows pressure from conservative political figures and activists seeking their expulsion.<\/p>\n
Shortly after Saturday\u2019s announcement, far-right influencer and Trump ally Laura Loomer wrote on social media that she had reported Soleimani\u2019s niece to the State Department, and she thanked Rubio for his actions.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a big scalp,\u201d she said of Soleimeini Afshar\u2019s removal.<\/p>\n
An online petition, started two months ago on the website Change.org, also called for Soleimeini Afshar to be deported, and after the war began, it gained more than 4,000 signatures.<\/p>\n
Ardeshir-Larijani, meanwhile, had worked in oncology at the Emory University School of Medicine in the southern state of Georgia.<\/p>\n
After Iran initiated a deadly crackdown against antigovernment protesters in December and January, demonstrators gathered at the university\u2019s cancer institute to demand Ardeshir-Larijani\u2019s removal.<\/p>\n
A Change.org petition calling for her deportation had gathered 157,017 signatures, as of Saturday.<\/p>\n
The petition underscored Ardeshir-Larijani\u2019s familial ties to the government of Iran\u2019s late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who was killed on the first day of the war.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile she lives peacefully in the U.S., countless young Iranians are dying in Iran due to the policies and decisions made by Ali Khamenei and his inner circle, including her father,\u201d the petition reads.<\/p>\n
US Congressman Earl \u201cBuddy\u201d Carter of Georgia also lent his voice to the push, calling for Ardeshir-Larijani to have her state medical licence revoked.<\/p>\n
\u201cAmerica\u2019s medical institutions must not serve as a safe harbor for individuals connected by blood and loyalty to regimes that openly call for the death of Americans,\u201d the Republican wrote in an open letter<\/a> to Emory. \u201cPatient safety, public trust, and national security demand decisive action now. \u201d<\/p>\nAs of January, Ardeshir-Larijani was no longer employed by Emory, according to the school\u2019s student newspaper, The Emory Wheel.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The United States has revoked the permanent residency of two women it says are related to Qassem Soleimani, the late major general who led Iran\u2019s Quds Force, the foreign branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), from 1998 until his assassination in 2020. In a statement on Saturday, the US Department of State asserted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17710,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-us-canada-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17709\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}