OPINION:
Last week, the niece and grandniece of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the deceased terrorist, were arrested by federal agents in Los Angeles after reportedly living a sumptuous lifestyle in the U.S. while promoting Islamist terrorism worldwide.
While touting America as the “Great Satan,” Hamideh Soleimani Afshar, 47, and her daughter, Sarinasadat Hosseiny, 25, were posting now-deleted Instagram pictures of themselves jet-setting around the U.S.: partying in Miami, vacationing in Alaska, clubbing in Las Vegas and chugging Champagne in front of a helicopter in an undisclosed location in the desert.
In most of their posts, they are scantily clad in designer couture, wearing bikinis, midriff tops, miniskirts and Christian Louboutin high heels while clinging to Louis Vuitton handbags, with their dark hair freely flowing, unrestricted by a hijab.
In Iran, if women are not covered in their hijabs properly, acid is thrown onto their faces, and they are beaten by the morality police, arrested and blacklisted.
“Until recently, Hamideh Soleimani Afshar and her daughter were green card holders living lavishly in the United States,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced of their arrests Friday. “This week, I terminated both Afshar and her daughter’s legal status, and they are now in ICE custody, pending removal from the United States. The Trump administration will not allow our country to become a home for foreign nationals who support anti-American terrorist regimes.”
Why Ms. Afshar and Ms. Hosseiny were allowed to live in the U.S. in the first place, given their relation to Soleimani and their vocal support for the IRGC, is concerning.
Ms. Afshar entered the U.S. in 2015 on a tourist visa and was granted asylum in 2019. She became a green card holder in 2021, a year after her uncle was killed in a drone strike ordered by President Trump in his first administration.
Last year, while applying for U.S. naturalization, Ms. Afshar revealed she had visited Iran four times since receiving her green card, an admission that undermined her initial asylum claim. Ms. Hosseiny came to the U.S. with her mother in 2015 on a student visa, was granted asylum in 2019 and received a green card in 2023.
While living in the United States, Ms. Afshar “promoted Iranian regime propaganda, celebrated attacks against American soldiers and military facilities in the Middle East, praised the new Iranian Supreme Leader, denounced America as the ‘Great Satan,’ and voiced her unflinching support for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a designated terror organization,” the State Department claimed after revoking her and her daughter’s legal status.
In 2022, IRGC Gen. Morteza Mirian, commander of the ground operations, claimed 4,000 relatives of IRGC “senior officials” live in the U.S., Canada and Europe. In 2019, Brian Hook, a special representative for Iran under Mr. Trump, told Iran International that “children of Islamic republic officials live rich and comfortable lives in the U.S. and other countries while Iranian people live in terrible conditions.” Mr. Hook said this showed “the regime’s hypocrisy.”
It also shows weakness in the West’s immigration systems, which Iran has systematically taken advantage of throughout the years.
“When we talk about the presence of agents of the Islamic republic, especially the IRGC, we should understand this is not random. It operates in layers,” Mehdi Ghadimi, an exiled Iranian journalist, told Fox News Digital last month. “They come as students or professors, but many have prior connections to the IRGC, and part of their role is to normalize the Islamic republic in universities and gather information on activists.”
Last month, the New York Post reported that children of the Iranian regime elite are “at prestigious universities across the U.S., including the University of Massachusetts, New York’s Union College and George Washington University.”
Mr. Rubio’s State Department seems to be paying attention.
In March, the department terminated the legal status of Fatemeh Ardeshir-Larijani, daughter of Ali Larijani, a former secretary of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran. Ms. Larijani was a doctor who taught at Emory University in Atlanta before the university parted ways with her in January, reportedly under pressure from dissidents.
In addition to Ms. Larijani, the Post identified five other high-ranking IRGC family members working at prestigious universities across the U.S.
“I would think that there would be a security risk as Iranian academics have been critical in forming public opinion on the left in the U.S., essentially deceiving liberals into thinking that the regime is more progressive, when it’s still advancing the same hard-line agenda,” Janatan Sayeh, an Iran analyst at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a Washington-based think tank, told the Post.
He noted: “A lot of them are nephews and nieces, and it’s hard to track them because they don’t have the same last name as the regime leaders.”
No matter. If U.S. intelligence can hunt down Iran’s leaders in their own country, then it should be able to identify where their family members live within the U.S.
Then, all should be deported back to Iran. No one who identifies the U.S. as the “Great Satan” and advocates on behalf of the IRGC should be allowed to live and prosper in America.
• Kelly Sadler is the commentary editor at The Washington Times.
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