Iran responded in tit-for-tat fashion to Trump’s executive order banning entry to nationals from Iran and six other Muslim countries.
A day after US President Donald Trump issued an executive order imposing a 90-day ban on nationals of seven Muslim countries from entering the United States, Iran announced on Saturday that it will respond in “reciprocity” by banning US citizens from visiting the Islamic Republic.
“Iran will implement the principle of reciprocity until the offensive US limitations against Iranian nationals are lifted,” the Iranian regime’s foreign ministry wrote in a statement.
“The US decision to restrict travel for Muslims to the US, even if for a temporary period of three months, is an obvious insult to the Islamic world and in particular to the great nation of Iran.”
Trump, however, stressed that the new measures were intended to prevent anyone who may pose a threat to national security from entering the US.
“We want to ensure that we are not admitting into our country the very threats our soldiers are fighting overseas,” Trump said as he signed the order at the Pentagon. “We only want to admit those into our country who will support our country and love deeply our people.”
Foreign nationals excluded from the executive order’s restrictions include those “traveling on diplomatic visas, North Atlantic Treaty Organization visas, C-2 visas for travel to the United Nations, and G-1, G-2, G-3, and G-4 visas.”
Trump’s executive order made particular mention of the temporary restrictions placed on Syrian nationals entering the United States. Along with Iran, the five other Muslim nations implicitly referred to in Trump’s executive order included Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen.
“I hereby proclaim that the entry of nationals of Syria as refugees is detrimental to the interests of the United States and thus suspend any such entry until such time as I have determined that sufficient changes have been made to the USRAP (US Refugee Admissions Program) to ensure that admission of Syrian refugees is consistent with the national interest,” the order read.
Regarding the USRAP, the executive order calls for a period of 120 days for the US secretary of state and secretary of Homeland Security, together with the director of National Intelligence, to conduct a review in determining “what additional procedures should be taken to ensure that those approved for refugee admission do not pose a threat to the security and welfare of the United States, and shall implement such additional procedures.”
During the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump had called for a temporary entry ban on Muslims from outside the US. “Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on,” he said in a press release on December 7, 2015.
The temporary ban in Trump’s executive order on Friday has already affected at least a dozen passengers on transit into the US, according to CNN.
By: Jonathan Benedek, World Israel News