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Rubio also rescinded the legal status of the daughter of Ali Larijani, the late secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, and her husband.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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Buxom daughter of senior Islamic Republic of Iran leader fired from Emory Medical School

Fatemeh Ardeshir-Larijani and her teeth

Ali Larijani sits at the heart of Iran's top leadership. He enforces the brutal crackdown on protesters that has now claimed at least 36,500 lives and left 330,000 wounded. He rails against the Great Satan, America, and even more fiercely against the Little Satan, Israel. Just two weeks ago he claimed the only people on the streets in Iranian cities were Mossad agents. He also blamed Trump for the protests, because Trump and the Jews obviously run the world and all that happens in it.

An Iranian defector has called Larijani the mastermind behind the massacre of protesters. See more in "Ali Larijani Masterminded the Massacre says Former Official," IranWire, January 18, 2026:

According to a former Islamic Republic official, speaking to IranWire through a traveler, Ali Larijani, the Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, has been at the center of the January 2026 crackdown. The source says Larijani is positioning himself for the post-Khamenei era, using his close ties with IRGC commanders and intelligence agencies, along with his family's connections to senior clerics, to build support across different factions and prepare to lead the system after Khamenei's death.

Larijani hails from a powerful clerical dynasty. His father, Mirza Hashem Amoli, was a prominent Shia Grand Ayatollah and a key figure at the Qom Seminary before the Revolution. His eldest brother, Mohammad Javad Larijani, served as a senior diplomat and Deputy Foreign Minister. His younger brother, Sadeq Larijani, is a seminary professor in Qom and a former Chief Justice of the Islamic Republic. Sadeq is often named as a potential successor to Khamenei.

Ali Larijani was naturally delighted when his daughter, the plump and pampered offspring of the regime's sinister elite, landed a teaching position at a U.S. medical school. Iranian exiles have long complained that the children of their oppressors study in the West, with tuition and living costs covered by funds their fathers stole from Iran's treasury. Then these same children secure jobs in the West as post-grads. They are the golden youth of Iran's nomenklatura. Now the daughter of this same Ali Larijani, one of Iran's worst non-clerical killers, has lost her teaching job at Emory Medical School. More details on her justified dismissal appear in "Daughter of top Iranian official who led regime crackdown fired from US medical school," Times of Israel, January 25, 2026:

The daughter of a top Iranian official has been dismissed from employment at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, following US sanctions on her father in the wake of the Iranian regime's brutal crackdown on protesters, according to the university’s newspaper Saturday.

Fatemeh Ardeshir-Larijani is the daughter of Ali Larijani, senior adviser to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and has served as assistant professor at Emory's medical school, teaching hematology and medical oncology at the prestigious southern US university.

"A physician who is the daughter of a senior Iranian government official is no longer an employee of Emory," said the university's Winship Cancer Institute, following requests for comment from media.

"Because this is a personnel matter, we are unable to provide additional information," an Emory spokesperson added.

Ardeshir-Larijani's dismissal from Emory came some two weeks after sanctions were placed on her father by the US Treasury Department, in response to his alleged role masterminding the regime’s crackdown on protests that rocked the country this month.

In announcement of the sanctions earlier this month, the treasury said that Ali Larijani "is responsible for coordinating the response to the protests on behalf of the Supreme Leader of Iran and has publicly called for Iranian security forces to use force to repress peaceful protesters."…

The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency on Saturday put the death toll at 5,137, with the number expected to increase. More than 27,700 people have been arrested, it said. Those earlier figures on deaths and wounded have been overtaken by the latest estimates, accepted by Iran International, TIME journalists, and American analysts with sources among medical personnel in Iran. They conclude that at least 36,500 protesters have been killed, and 330,000 wounded, by the IRGC, the Basij, and the police.

Was it wrong to fire Larijani’s daughter? Is she just an innocent who should not pay for her father's crimes? No. She, her father, and the rest of the Iranian elite who torture and murder their opponents while ensuring their own families enjoy Western freedoms for study and even teaching are not innocent. We need to drive home to that elite that their children are no longer welcome in the West. Their fathers cannot keep slaughtering tens of thousands in Iran and expect their kids to face zero consequences.

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Larijani’s daughter has lived as one of the most privileged children of the Iranian elite. Her father, once in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and head of regime security, now serves as secretary of the Supreme National Security Council and a key architect of the latest murderous crackdown. In the past month of bloodshed she could have spoken out against the regime. 

She could have joined exile demonstrations here in America. She could have signed a protest letter. She did none of those things.

She has been fired from Emory. Now it is time to send Fatemeh Ardeshir-Larijani back to her country, where her murderous father and his ilk will welcome her. She has overstayed her welcome here long enough.

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