As the Islamic Republic of Iran has been amping up its aggression against Israeli targets and American troops, the Biden administration allowed Tehran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, to visit New York and deliver threats, vowing Thursday to escalate the Mideast war. 

President Biden, in a slight toughening of his Iran policies, now claims that he has delivered a strong message to Tehran: “My warning to the Ayatollah was that if they continue to move against those troops, we will respond, and he should be prepared,” he said Wednesday. 

“We have never been after the expansion of the war,” Mr. Abdollahian told the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday. Yet, he added, if the Americans “don’t want the war to spread out they need to stop the Zionist regime.” If the “genocide” in Gaza doesn’t end, America “will not be spared from this fire,” he said. 

Mr. Abdollahian arrived Wednesday evening at the Hilton Millenium One, across the street from the UN building at Turtle Bay. “When the murderous Iranian FM wanted to come to NYC in 2020, I said no,” a former secretary of state, Michael Pompeo, wrote on X, referring to the time America denied a visa to another foreign minister, Javad Zarif. 

In contrast, the current foreign minister — a man who has “blood on his hands” — is allowed in. Even as Mr. Abdollahian “sits in luxury in our country, his regime is holding innocent Americans hostage in horrific conditions,” Mr. Pompeo added. 

Unlike Mr. Zarif, whose term was marked by endless attempts at impressing Westerners, Mr. Abdollahian’s audience is mostly the anti-American Iran-led “resistance.” A veteran of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ Quds force, he has been spotted at Beirut and elsewhere, conferring with officials of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah on the eve of the October 7 masacre in southern Israel.       

“The Iranian Foreign Minister and his team were instrumental in directing this attack,” the founder of the Israeli think tank Alma, Sarit Zehavi, tells the Sun. Based on publicly available press reports, Alma composed a timeline of Mr. Abdollahian’s meetings that led to what Hamas calls “Operation al Aqsa Flood.”

The Wall Street Journal and other publications also reported on Mr. Abdollahian’s movements, indicating his intimate involvement in organizing the October 7 atrocities. Since then he has also coordinated Iranian regional proxy attacks that increasingly target Israeli civilians and American troops.  

Mr. Biden’s oft-repeated message to Iran and its Mideast proxies who think of getting involved in the war is, “Don’t.” Yet, Iranian-backed militias increasingly target American troops that are based in Iraq and Syria. A Navy vessel stationed in the Red Sea has intercepted dozens of long-range missiles launched toward Israel from Yemen by the Iran-backed Houthis. 

At the same time, Hezbollah is daily rocketing Israel and orchestrating attempts to infiltrate the country through its northern border. Since October 7, Mr. Abdollahian has visited Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut, and other capitals. His aim is “not only to assert Iran’s continued support for Hamas, but also to review the war and coordinate future steps, particularly with Hezbollah,” Alma’s Yaakov Lappin writes.   

Under the UN’s host country agreement, America is obligated to admit into the country officials wishing to participate in the world body’s deliberations. Yet, U.S. laws allow the denial of visas to anyone posing a “security, terrorism, or foreign policy” threat to America. So why would Washington allow  in Mr. Abdollahian?

“Do we particularly like that he is on U.S. soil? No,” the national security council’s spokesman, John Kirby, told reporters Thursday. Yet, he added, the UN secretary-general has asked foreign ministers to attend a Security Council meeting, so America was obligated to allow him in. 

In reality, Mr. Abdollahian arrived at New York a full day after the Security Council’s session that Mr. Kirby cited ended in a deadlock. Instead, he came to join an anti-Israel session at the General Assembly, a body whose actions are declaratory, rather than actionable. Last month Mr. Abdollahian attended the Assembly’s annual September meeting. 

“I don’t understand what we gain from having this man again coming to New York to propagandize,” the policy director at United Against Nuclear Iran, Jason Brodsky, tells the Sun. Admitting him in is a symptom of Mr. Biden’s failed Iran policy, he added. 

Since 2021, Washington has gradually eased sanctions against Iran and endlessly attempted to revive a 2015 nuclear deal. Tehran rebuffed all attempts at negotiations, and proceeded to violate the deal, enriching uranium to near-bomb grade, even as America removed the pressure on Iran’s economy.

The October 7 attack, though, may have started to change the administration’s approach to Iran. Mr. Biden “has started talking about Iran more and sent military assets to the theater, ” Mr. Brodsky says. He adds, though, that Washington’s “broad policies are yet to catch up to the rhetoric.”