MP Blasts US Visa Denial to Iran’s UN Envoy Choice
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Chairman of the Iranian Parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Alaeddin Boroujerdi said that the US decision to deny a visa to Hamid Abutalebi, Iran’s newly-appointed ambassador to the United Nations, is a clear breach of international laws.
Speaking to the Tasnim News Agency, Boroujerdi said that the Iranian Foreign Ministry should seriously follow the issue at the UN and voice its protest against the US decision.
“The US intervention in the internal affairs of Iran, as a member of the UN, is a clear violation of international laws” and shows that the US government is misusing its position to host the UN headquarters, Boroujerdi said.
“In my opinion, in this case Iran’s diplomacy apparatus should not retreat one iota (from its stance),” he added.
On Tuesday, the White House said the new Iranian ambassador to the UN will not be welcomed in the US, and described his nomination as “not viable”.
Washington has decided to deny a visa to Abutalebi over his possible involvement in the takeover of the US embassy in Tehran during post-revolution incidents in 1979.
On November 4, 1979, and in less than a year after the victory of the Islamic Revolution that toppled a US-backed monarchy, Iranian university students that called themselves "students following the line of (the late) Imam (Khomeini)" seized the US embassy in Tehran.
The students justified the takeover by insisting that the compound had become a center of espionage and planning to overthrow the newly established Islamic system in Iran.
The students occupying the embassy later published documents proving that the compound was indeed engaged in plans and measures to overthrow the Islamic system.