Sec. of State Rubio says he'll terminate green cards of 3 Iranian nationals connected to "Screaming Mary"

Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on Saturday the termination of the green cards of three Iranian nationals who are connected to an infamous propagandist, known as “Screaming Mary.”

 
Masoumeh Ebtekar was given that nickname because she was the primary English-language spokesperson for the Iranian students who stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979. Over 50 Americans were held hostage for 444 days. During the crisis, Ebtekar frequently justified their captivity and denounced the United States.

Her son, Seyed Eissa Hashemi, and his family entered the U.S. in 2014 with visas approved by the Barack Hussein Obama administration. Two years later, they were granted lawful permanent resident status. Rubio revoked that protection this week based on their ties to the Islamic regime.

Hashemi, Maryam Tahmasebi, and their son were detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and are now awaiting deportation.

“Her family should never have been allowed to benefit from the extraordinary privilege of living in our country,” Rubio said of Ebtekar on Saturday. “America can never become home for anti-American terrorists or their families — and under the Trump Administration, it never will.”

The move comes one week after Rubio terminated the legal status of the niece and grandniece of former Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Major General Qassem Soleimani, who was killed by a U.S. drone strike in 2020. Like Hashemi and his family, Hamideh Afshar Soleimani and her daughter were placed in ICE custody for their pending removal from the country.

Rubio also rescinded the legal status of the daughter of Ali Larijani, the late secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, and her husband. Fatemeh Ardeshir-Larijani and Seyed Kalantar Motamedi were both deported and are barred from future entry.

In a press release issued Saturday, the State Department briefly explained how Ebtekar coerced American hostages into speaking positively about their treatment when, in fact, it was quite painful. The department said they were “held in solitary confinement, blindfolded and starved, and subjected to physical and psychological terror, including beatings and mock executions.”

Ebtekar later rose in the ranks of the Iranian government, becoming the country’s environmental head twice and serving as a vice president from 2017 to 2021. She is not currently holding a top government position.

Tensions between the U.S. and Iran are high as a tentative two-week ceasefire remains in effect.Vice President JD Vance, who described the truce as “fragile” earlier this week, is presently leading a U.S. delegation to negotiate peace with Iranian officials in Pakistan.

The peace talks come at the six-week mark for Operation Epic Fury, which is on hold for now. The Trump administration has repeatedly touted the operation as a success, having destroyed much of Iran’s military capabilities in just over five weeks.

This is not mercy mistaken for weakness. It is the overdue application of a simple principle: the United States owes no sanctuary to those who have celebrated its humiliation or served regimes that seek its destruction. For decades, the West indulged the fantasy that opening its doors to the families of its enemies would somehow moderate them or signal moral superiority. Instead, it only advertised vulnerability.

Rubio’s decisions, and the broader actions of the Trump administration, mark a return to realism. America is not a hotel for the relatives of hostage-takers, propagandists, and architects of terror. It is a country with the right, and now apparently the will, to decide who belongs in it and who does not. The age of automatic privilege for the ideological offspring of America’s adversaries appears, at last, to be closing.

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