military service; New US excuse to prevent Iranians from entering
According to Fars News Agency’s International Service, “Mo Toghraei” is an Iranian-Canadian passenger who was interrogated by US agents when he was planning to fly to the United States for serving in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps at Calgary International Airport. has taken.
He is a sewage engineer in Madison, Wisconsin, and traveled to Canada last October to visit his wife and children, according to Intercept. Tughrai wanted to return to Wisconsin to work.
Passengers planning to travel to the United States from Calgary Airport must pass through a US Customs and Central Protection Station to check their passports before boarding a plane. Toghraei, 53, who is originally Iranian and a Canadian citizen, had gone through this process many times without any problems.
Intercept written by Tughraei was sitting quietly in the interrogation room next to another passenger who was to be re-examined. He thought it was probably due to a computer glitch, or that officers may have randomly selected people to ask a few questions.
When the officer called his name, a relatively short rooster with buckwheat roots and a soft voice walked over to the table to talk to the officer. After Toghraei confirmed his name and a few other details, the officer went to the main point: “Where did you spend your military service?”
“I had never been asked such a question before boarding a plane,” Toghrai told Intercept. “When I was asked this question, it crossed my mind that there is a serious problem with a job.”
Toghraei had spent his military service in Iran when he was almost 20 years old and in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. He had a clerical job in the IRGC and translated documents related to water and sewage management. Now an American officer was asking him about his work in the IRGC, decades ago.
“When I was asked in which section of the armed forces I had served, I honestly told them that I had been in the IRGC,” says Toghraei.
In April 2009, the US government listed the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a “foreign terrorist organization” (FTO). This was the first time the White House had listed the official armed forces of a foreign country as a terrorist organization. Following this decision, the Supreme National Security Council of Iran listed the US military headquarters in the region as a terrorist group.
The Intercept site wrote that it was probably because of this decision that he was now being interrogated, while he had never encountered such a problem before.
Another group of US Customs officials began asking about more details about the IRGC’s military service, including what uniform he wore, who he worked with, and what training he received. Toghraei says he has answered all these questions and said that his job is to translate documents and not to wear a uniform.
The officers asked Tughrai if he had used a weapon in the IRGC, to which he replied that he had only been given basic training in the use of weapons during the first days of the training course. “I was even asked things like my boss’s name or where my office was,” he said. “I honestly said again that I do not remember these things, because all these events are from decades ago and I have forgotten the details.”
He says these answers did not convince the officers, and moments later their behavior became hostile. Tughraei eventually lost his flight. “I had only served in my youth and I did not have the freedom to choose,” he said. I told them that I had traveled to America many times in my life and had never had such a problem. “I am now 53 years old. Can you tell me what happened all of a sudden?”
Four hours after the secondary inspections of Tughrai were carried out, an agent for Tughzai had news: it had been determined that he had no right to enter the United States. His temporary visa, which had been approved seven months earlier, was “revoked”. Tughrai received no further information and was told to leave the airport.
A short voyage to Canada to visit his family was accompanied by a ban on his entry into the United States. He did not know how to explain to his boss in Madison why he was not returning to work. He did not know what would happen to his apartment, car and other property in the United States. Tughrai had never had legal problems in his life, now in middle age he was told that it was dangerous to enter the United States through international borders.
Taheri left the airport in a state of confusion. In the scorching cold of Calgary airport, he sat on a bench to call his wife. As soon as he picked up the phone, he started crying. Little did he know that the moment the IRGC was placed on the US terrorist list was the first chapter in his life moving toward complete collapse.
Tughrai is the only dual-national Iranian to have been interrogated or detained or barred from entering the United States, Mexico and Britain in the past two years by listing Trump on the list of so-called terrorist organizations.
More than 20 people who have served in the Revolutionary Guards have told Intercept that they have similar experiences with Mr. Toghraei. Most of them are Iranian-Americans, but some have been detained at airports in other countries, including Australia or EU member states.
The problems these individuals referred to began after the Trump administration placed the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps under so-called terrorist organizations under Article 219 of the Citizenship and Immigration Act.
Prior to the Trump administration, experts in the United States had warned of the consequences of the move and tried to warn the White House. The New York Times, the first media outlet to report on the US government’s intentions in March 2017, wrote that the plan was opposed by Pentagon officials and the CIA when it was presented.
At the time, the Pentagon and CIA assessed that such a move would put US troops and intelligence agents at risk of retaliation by foreign governments.
Legal experts at the time said that if the parties to the Geneva Conventions called each other armed forces a “terrorist organization” in a new innovation, and the practice became more common, members of the US armed forces could be reciprocally “terrorists” if arrested in a third country. Be considered and tried.
The US government’s crackdown on the IRGC is a continuation of Washington’s punitive policies against countries and groups that have failed to advance its goals in the region. Is.
The lives of people like Tughrai and others like him are now being held hostage by US domestic politics.
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