The son of one of the most notorious faces of the 1979 Iran hostage crisis had been living comfortably in Los Angeles. He won’t be anymore.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio this week terminated the lawful permanent resident status of three Iranian nationals connected to Masoumeh Ebtekar, known to American media as “Screaming Mary” for her role as spokeswoman for the militants who stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979. Seyed Eissa Hashemi, his wife Maryam Tahmasebi, and their son are now in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement pending removal from the United States, according to a State Department statement.
Hashemi is Ebtekar’s son. Ebtekar served as the leading English-language propagandist for the hostage-takers who held 52 Americans captive for 444 days, subjecting them to beatings, starvation, and mock executions. She later married one of her fellow hostage-takers and rose through the ranks of the Iranian government, serving as Vice President for Women and Family Affairs from 2017 to 2021.
“Her family should never have been allowed to benefit from the extraordinary privilege of living in our country,” Rubio said. “America can never become home for anti-American terrorists or their families — and under the Trump Administration, it never will.”
How the Family Obtained U.S. Residency
Hashemi, Tahmasebi, and their son entered the United States in 2014 on visas issued by the Obama administration. In June 2016, the Obama administration granted all three lawful permanent resident status through the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program. The State Department noted that the green cards were issued just months after the IRGC seized two U.S. Navy vessels and detained 10 American sailors.
How the family passed through the vetting process for that program, given Ebtekar’s well-documented and publicly known history, has not been explained by the Obama administration or the agencies involved.
Ebtekar’s role in the hostage crisis was extensively covered by American media at the time and in subsequent years. She made no secret of her views: in a late-1990s interview, she described the hostage-taking as “the best direction that could have been taken” by Iran.
The Trump administration has since suspended the issuance of new Diversity Immigrant Visas.
Rubio, Trump Admin Cracking Down
The action against the Hashemi family follows a series of similar moves by Rubio targeting U.S.-based relatives of Iranian regime figures.
Last week, Rubio revoked the green cards of Hamideh Afshar Soleimani and her daughter, the niece and grandniece of IRGC Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani, who was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad in January 2020. Federal agents arrested them the same night at their Southern California home.
The State Department described Afshar as “an outspoken supporter of the totalitarian, terrorist regime in Iran” who had promoted Iranian regime propaganda on social media. DHS said Afshar’s multiple return trips to Iran after receiving her green card indicated her original asylum claims were fraudulent.
Rubio also terminated the status of Fatemeh Ardeshir-Larijani, daughter of Ali Larijani, who served as Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council until his death in an Israeli airstrike in March 2026, and her husband Seyed Kalantar Motamedi. Both have left the United States and are barred from future entry.
The State Department said the administration “will never allow America to become a home for foreign nationals tied to anti-American terrorist regimes.”
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Editor’s Note: For decades, former presidents have been all talk and no action. Now, Donald Trump is eliminating the threat from Iran once and for all.
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