Secretary of State Marco Rubio stripped the lawful permanent resident status of three Iranian nationals linked to one of the most infamous figures of the 1979 Tehran hostage crisis, and all three are now in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody awaiting deportation. The move marks the latest, and perhaps most symbolically charged, step in the Trump administration's escalating crackdown on Iranian regime-connected individuals living in the United States.

The three individuals are Seyed Eissa Hashemi, his wife Maryam Tahmasebi, and their son. Hashemi, as The Hill reported, is the son of Masoumeh Ebtekar, the English-speaking spokeswoman for the Islamist militants who stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979 and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. Ebtekar became known as "Screaming Mary" for her role as the public face of the hostage-takers.

The State Department did not mince words about Ebtekar's conduct. Its official statement described her as "the lead spokesperson and media intermediary for the hostage-takers" who "crafted propaganda falsely showing the humane treatment of the hostages, arranging staged interviews in which the American hostages were pressured to describe their treatment in positive terms, even as they were being held in solitary confinement, blindfolded and starved, and subjected to physical and psychological terror, including beatings and mock executions."

That woman's son had been living comfortably in the United States for over a decade.

How the family got here, and who let them in

The timeline laid out by the State Department raises hard questions about how these individuals ever received legal status. Rubio said Hashemi and his family were granted visas to enter the United States in 2014. Then, in June 2016, the Obama administration approved all three for lawful permanent resident status through the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program.

The State Department pointedly noted the timing. That green-card approval came "just months after the IRGC seized two U.S. Navy vessels and captured 10 American sailors." At a moment when Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was humiliating American servicemembers on the world stage, the Obama administration was granting permanent residency to the son of one of the most notorious anti-American propagandists in modern Iranian history.

Ebtekar herself went on to serve as Iran's vice president from 2017 to 2021, a fact that only deepens the question of why her family was ever welcomed onto American soil in the first place.

Fox News reported that Hashemi had been living in Los Angeles before the revocation. Rubio announced the action in a Saturday morning post on X, writing that Ebtekar "was the spokeswoman for the Islamic terrorists who stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979 and held 52 Americans hostages for 444 days."

Rubio was blunt about the policy principle at stake:

"Her family should never have been allowed to benefit from the extraordinary privilege of living in our country."

He added: "America can never become a home for anti-American terrorists or their families, and under the Trump Administration, it never will."

Part of a broader crackdown on Iranian regime figures

The Hashemi family revocations did not happen in isolation. They came roughly a week after federal agents arrested two relatives of slain IRGC commander Qasem Soleimani. Just The News reported that Hamideh Soleimani Afshar, identified as Soleimani's niece, and her daughter were taken into ICE custody after Rubio terminated their lawful permanent resident status.

The State Department said Afshar had "promoted Iranian regime propaganda in the U.S., celebrated attacks on American soldiers and military facilities, praised Iran's supreme leader, and supported the IRGC." Her husband was barred from entering the United States. As we previously reported, Rubio ordered the deportation of Soleimani's relatives as part of the same enforcement wave.

Rubio also revoked the visas of Fatemeh Ardeshir-Larijani and her husband, Seyed Kalantar Motamedi. Ardeshir-Larijani is the daughter of Ali Larijani, who served as secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council and was killed in an Israeli airstrike in mid-March. The State Department said both Ardeshir-Larijani and Motamedi are no longer in the United States and are barred from future entry.

Taken together, Rubio determined this week that at least four Iranian nationals connected to the current or former Iranian government were no longer eligible for green cards or U.S. visas, the Associated Press reported. The administration had also previously revoked or declined to renew visas for several Iranian U.N. mission diplomats and staffers.

The Washington Times described the actions as part of a broader Trump administration effort targeting Iranian officials, diplomats, and family members viewed as supportive of the regime or engaged in anti-American activity.

The wider conflict with Iran

These immigration enforcement actions are unfolding against a dramatic geopolitical backdrop. The article notes that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in targeted strikes on his compound on the first day of a joint U.S.-Israeli military operation. Iran's leadership has been in upheaval since those strikes.

President Trump announced a temporary ceasefire in what has been described as a six-week conflict. Days after that announcement, U.S. and Iranian officials began meeting in Islamabad, Pakistan, for mediated face-to-face talks aimed at negotiating a longer-term agreement to end hostilities.

The State Department's broader pressure campaign against Iran has included bounties on IRGC leaders and expanded military posture in the region. Rubio's green card revocations fit squarely into that pattern, using every available tool, including immigration enforcement, to squeeze the regime and its network.

The real question: How did this happen in the first place?

The most uncomfortable fact in this entire episode is not that the Trump administration acted. It is that the son of "Screaming Mary", a woman who helped terrorize American hostages, who fabricated propaganda to cover up their abuse, and who later rose to become Iran's vice president, was granted a green card by the United States government.

That green card came through the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program, a lottery system that has long drawn criticism from immigration hawks for its randomness and lack of rigorous security vetting. The Obama administration approved it in 2016, at a time when Iran was actively seizing American naval vessels. No one in a position of authority apparently flagged the connection, or if they did, it did not matter.

The family entered on visas in 2014. They received permanent residency in 2016. They lived in the United States for roughly a decade before anyone in government saw fit to act. That is not a story about one bad decision. It is a story about a system that, for years, did not treat the question of who gets to live here with the seriousness it demands.

Rubio has framed his approach to border security and immigration as a matter of national survival, not xenophobia. Cases like this one make his argument for him.

Several open questions remain. The name of Hashemi and Tahmasebi's son has not been publicly disclosed. The specific legal authority used to revoke the green cards has not been identified in available reporting. And it remains unclear whether the State Department's case rests solely on the family connection to Ebtekar or on additional individual conduct by the three people now in custody.

What is clear is the direction of travel. The Trump administration is not waiting for courts or committees to tell it whether the relatives of known anti-American operatives belong in this country. It is making that call and enforcing it.

When the son of a woman who staged propaganda to hide the torture of American hostages can live quietly in Los Angeles for a decade on a green card, the system did not work. Fixing it late is better than never fixing it at all.