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This article originally appeared on Iran So Far Away<\/a> <\/i>and was republished with permission.\u00a0<\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n Since 2017, Iranians have widely discussed reports that the Obama administration granted a number of U.S. Green Cards (variously reported as 2,500 or 2,800) to Khomeiniist regime leaders as part of a secret codicil to the 2015 nuclear deal, the JCPOA.<\/p>\n This allegation was first published on February 14th<\/sup>\u00a0of that year by\u00a0Amad News<\/a>, an outlet founded by dissident Ruhollah Zam, who was later lured into a trap by IRGC intelligence, forcibly taken to Iran, summarily tried, and then\u00a0executed<\/a>\u00a0in 2020. At the time, the story did not gain traction in the West, though it was covered by prominent outlets such as\u00a0Al Arabiya<\/a>.<\/p>\n The allegation received wider coverage in 2018 when Hojjatoleslam Mojtaba Zolnour, an opponent of then-president Hassan Rouhani, raised the matter in an interview with the Iranian newspaper Etemad. Zolnour added that 30 to 40 children of top Khomeinist officials were then studying in the United States, while many others were \u201cwasting Iranian public assets\u201d to live \u201cextravagant lives\u201d there.<\/p>\n His remarks were later echoed by\u00a0Fox News<\/a>\u00a0and appeared to be reinforced by President Donald Trump. On July 3, 2018, Trump\u00a0tweeted<\/a>: \u201cJust out that the Obama Administration granted citizenship, during the terrible Iran Deal negotiation, to 2,500 Iranians \u2013 including to government officials. How big (and bad) is that?\u201d<\/p>\n Iranians of all political persuasions also continued to appeal to the Trump Administration for confirmation of the Green Card story and, if applicable, disclosure of the recipients.<\/p>\n For example, on August 1, 2018, former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad\u00a0asked<\/a>: \u201cMr. Donald Trump; release the list of relatives of Iranian Government officials that (sic) have Green Cards and bank accounts in the United States; if you have such a list.\u201d<\/p>\n Representatives of both the former Obama Administration and then\u2013foreign minister Mohammad Javid Zarif quickly denied Trump\u2019s claim, while liberal press outlets in the U.S. largely dismissed it as slander unworthy of further comment.<\/p>\n Yet within Iran, Rouhani\u2019s rivals seized on the issue to discredit him and his advisers, and the Islamic regime\u2019s parliament (Majles) opened investigations to identify possible Green Card recipients.<\/p>\n In 2019, Javad Karimi Qoddousi, a member of the Majles\u2019s national security committee, published on his\u00a0website<\/a>\u00a0a list of 71 influential regime figures whom he claimed had documented foreign permanent residency for themselves or family members.<\/p>\n Hassan Rouhani and one of his then\u2013vice presidents,\u00a0Massoumeh Ebtekar<\/a>\u2014infamous for her role as spokesperson for the 1979 U.S. Embassy hostage-takers\u2014were on the list.<\/p>\n As the Jerusalem Post\u00a0commented<\/a>\u00a0at the time, \u201cEbtekar\u2019s son, Issa Hashemi, lives in the United States and is a doctoral student at the Los Angeles branch of the Chicago School of Professional Psychology\u2026Rouhani\u2019s nephew\u2026studied at the City College of New York and now works in the city.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s then\u2013special envoy on Iran, Brian Hook, responded to these calls in a video message in December 2018,\u00a0saying<\/a>\u2014seemingly conceding that Green Cards had in fact been issued\u2014\u201cI have to admit that this is another example of the hypocrisy of the regime,\u201d Hook said.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile regime officials chant \u2018Death to America\u2019, they send their families to the so called \u2018Great Satan\u2019 to live and study here, using the resources of the Iranian people. I can tell you that we are working on it, and while I can\u2019t discuss individual cases or internal policy deliberations, you can be sure that we are pursuing all options to pressure the corrupt hypocrites in your government to change their behavior.\u201d<\/p>\n After that, however, the matter appeared to stall. No public investigation was launched, and no further statements were forthcoming from Trump or his cabinet. Then came the 2020 election, and any chance of additional clarity on the Green Card issue seemed a nonstarter during the administration of Joe Biden.<\/p>\n In June 2024, the author of this article proposed publishing an open letter to Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson, urging him to fulfill Trump\u2019s and Hook\u2019s promises by investigating whether Green Cards were indeed traded as part of the JCPOA.<\/p>\n In preparing to do so, I translated several Farsi-language articles on the subject in the hope that Johnson or his staff would read them and take interest. However, an editor at an esteemed American research group told me that the topic was too speculative and unfounded to appear in print.<\/p>\n By 2026, however, after the U.S. and Israel began strikes against the Islamic Republic, Trump started taking action against relatives of regime officials living in the United States, deporting them to Iran. In this context, a particularly interesting article appeared in Tablet Magazine on May 6, 2026. Titled \u201cPrincelings of Persia<\/a>\u201d and written by Peter Theroux, it opens as follows:<\/p>\n I used to dismiss what I thought was an urban myth that, to help sell Tehran on the nuke deal, President Barack Obama granted thousands of Iranian spies a backdoor path to residence and ultimately citizenship in the United States\u2026\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Discussing Ebtekar\u2019s son, Eisa Hashemi, Theroux writes:<\/p>\n \u201cIncredibly enough, this scion of two embassy hostage takers \u201centered the United States in 2014 in visas issued by the Obama administration,\u201d according to a statement by Secretary of State Marco Rubio on April 11\u2026\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Taken together, the renewed reporting helps move the discussion from rumor and partisan accusation to a question that can be examined with specific names, dates, and immigration actions. The remaining issue is how to interpret this pattern\u2014and what responsibilities it places on U.S. institutions and the press.<\/p>\n As Theroux rightly notes, it strains credulity to treat as coincidence the apparent issuance of so many Green Cards to relatives of Tehran power-brokers within the same time period.<\/p>\n This circumstantial pattern provides strong grounds for concluding that some form of Green Card facilitation did occur around the time of the JCPOA, even if it was not a precise quid pro quo exchange of the kind Iranian sources originally asserted.<\/p>\n If Green Card facilitation occurred at scale\u2014even informally\u2014it becomes not only a historical question about the JCPOA era, but also a present-day question of enforcement, transparency, and national security.<\/p>\n President Trump, by directing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to search for these individuals and send them back to Iran, is not only protecting his country\u2019s security from possible spies and infiltrators; he is also responding to the desire of the Iranian people.<\/p>\n Having watched their country driven toward economic ruin by rulers who chant \u201cDeath to America,\u201d many can only smirk in anger when they see the families of those same rulers\u2014who appropriated national wealth\u2014spending it on lives of luxury in the very same \u201cGreat Satan,\u201d America. ICE\u2019s actions, however, are only a beginning. If there are more than 2,000 Green Card recipients, then many more may remain to be located, apprehended, and deported.<\/p>\n The media\u2019s response to this issue reveals how much still needs correction in its work. If liberal-leaning outlets can be presumed to have ignored the story because of opposition to Trump\u2014or even outright sympathy for Tehran\u2014the record of so-called conservative or independent media is no better. Timidity in publishing stories out of fear of being branded \u201cfake news\u201d by a biased chorus is not how journalism should function.<\/p>\n Iran So Far Away<\/a> is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support their work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Click HERE.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n The post Obama Secretly Gifted Thousands of Green Cards to Radical Iranian Regime Leaders in Disastrous Iran Nuclear Deal \u2014 Dissident Who Exposed It Was Brutally Executed<\/a> appeared first on The Gateway Pundit<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This article originally appeared on Iran So Far Away and was republished with permission.\u00a0 Since 2017, Iranians have<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nEscalation and Wider Coverage (2018)<\/em><\/h4>\n
Denials, Iranian Infighting, and Investigations (2018\u20132019)<\/em><\/h4>\n
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U.S. Response (Late 2018)<\/em><\/h4>\n
\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nStall and Loss of Momentum (2019\u20132024)<\/em><\/h4>\n
\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nA Renewed Attempt to Raise the Question (2024)<\/em><\/h4>\n
\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nNew Reporting and Apparent Confirmation (2026)<\/em><\/h4>\n
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Assessment: What the Pattern Suggests<\/em><\/h4>\n
\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nImplications and Enforcement<\/em><\/h4>\n
\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nMedia and Accountability<\/em><\/h4>\n
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