Why Was the Kin of an Iranian General Living in America?

Now that a high-living, Iranian regime-supporting Los Angeles resident named Hamideh Soleimani Afshar is jailed alongside her daughter, Sarinasadat Hosseiny, a question arises: Why was she in America to begin with? Besides posting scantily-clad selfies on social media accounts, Mrs. Afshar is also the niece of the Islamist Revolutionary Guards Corps Quds Force commander, Qasem Soleimani, killed in an American drone strike in January 2020.Did this family tree elude our immigration officers when they welcomed Mrs. Afshar, whose uncle’s hands were stained with American blood? Mrs. Afshar first arrived on our shores in 2015 on a student visa, the New York Post reports. She was granted permanent resident status in 2023. Did Biden administration officials approve the green card despite Mrs. Afshar’s relation to a man killed on Mr. Trump’s watch, or because of it? Regardless, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has good reasons to revoke Mrs. Afshar’s residence status. “They’re not being punished because of Qassem Soleimani,” a dissident journalist, Masih Alinejad, told Fox News Monday. “They’re being punished because they asked for asylum, but they went back to Iran multiple times.” At Los Angeles, Ms. Alinejad adds, mother and daughter praised the IRGC and called America the Great Satan.Ms. Alinejad’s longtime cause has been the fight for Iranian women’s rights to dress as they please. She launched a campaign against the regime-madated hijab that so angered the Islamic Republic that Soleimani and IRGC successors made at least three attempts on Ms. Alinejad’s life. On American soil no less. She laments that while Iranians are being hanged for promoting liberty, relatives of well-known regime bigwigs enjoy freedom in America. Relatives of Iran’s former president, Hassan Rouhani, studied in America. A son and daughter of a former foreign minister, Javad Zarif, are American citizens. The granddaughter of a notorious judiciary chief, Mohammad Yazdi, known as the Tehran hangman, is here. A regime leader, Ali Larijani, who was killed last month has relatives here. The 1980 hostage-takers’s spokeswoman, Masoumeh Ebtekars, has a son who teaches at an American university. In the aftermath of Al Qaeda’s attack in 2001 on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, 140 Saudi nationals, including some with familial ties to Osama Bin Laden, were deported. They were apparently flown out to protect them from Americans seeking revenge. “This is just another example of our country coddling the Saudis and giving them special privileges that others would never get,” Senator Charles Schumer told the New York Times. The reversal of that “coddling” was afforded to Mrs. Afshar and her daughter by Democratic administrations. President George W. Bush was accused of hustling Saudis out to shield them from American anger. Presidents Obama and Biden rolled the red carpet to kin of Iranians who have perpetrated numerous atrocities against Americans, Middle Easterners, and their own countrymen. Those are the real “privileges that others would never get.” Ms. Alinejad, who is now an American citizen, notes that there are plenty of Iranian students, professors, and dissidents who were given asylum in America on the basis of legitimate fear for their lives. Mr. Rubio and immigration officials would be wise to exclude them from any list of potential deportees. Yet why should anyone live in America freely, and lavishly in Ms. Afshar’s case, while promoting the oppressive policies of their Iranian kin?

Why Was the Kin of an Iranian General Living in America?

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