The Trump administration has granted visas to senior Iranian officials—among them the president and the foreign minister—so that they may attend next week's high-level U.N. General Assembly gathering in New York, notwithstanding that the two nations remain mired in a stalemated war.

The State Department announced on Thursday that it had granted visas to Iran’s “core delegation,” along with indispensable staff, to attend the U.N. meetings.

According to U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity owing to visa privacy statutes, the core delegation comprises President Masoud Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.

The move is anomalous, given the more than six-month-long conflict between Iran and the United States and the absence of any indication that agreements to reopen the Strait of Hormuz or return to talks on Iran’s nuclear program are imminent.

It likewise comes as Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen have intensified attacks on Saudi infrastructure and shipping in the Red Sea, another major maritime route in the region where impediments have helped drive a surge in global oil prices.

Moreover, according to the United States—which has levied substantial sanctions against the country and, in recent weeks, inaugurated a fresh campaign aimed at severing “critical financial lifelines”—Iran persists as the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism.

By virtue of its status as the host nation for the United Nations headquarters, the United States finds itself generally constrained in its capacity to preclude foreign leaders from attending the General Assembly.

Nevertheless, it has on prior occasions denied visas to — or dissuaded applications from — leaders embroiled in active conflicts with the United States.

For last year’s U.N. convocations of world leaders — convened prior to the outbreak of the Iran war on Feb. 28 yet subsequent to the U.S. and Israeli air strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities in June 2025 — the State Department likewise sanctioned a circumscribed allotment of visas for Iranian diplomats, while concurrently imposing stringent constraints upon the delegation’s movements.

Those measures entailed stringent constraints upon the geographical ambit within which Iranian officials, attached to their U.N. mission, were permitted to travel throughout New York City, and furthermore proscribed their patronage of wholesale membership establishments, Costco and Sam’s Club among them.

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The announcement of the decision regarding the Iranian visas came merely a day after the State Department had denied visas to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his delegation, thereby precluding their attendance at the General Assembly.

“In accordance with our obligations as host country, the core delegation from the Iranian regime will be permitted to attend UN General Assembly High Level week,” the State Department said.

“The delegation will be subject to travel restrictions and will encounter prohibitions on the purchase of luxury and other goods, in keeping with our policy.

The delegation is smaller than last year.”

The department levelled accusations against the Palestinian Authority — which administers parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank — alleging that it sought to “internationalize” the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza by bringing cases before the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, while continuing to disburse stipends to prisoners incarcerated in Israel for attacks on Israelis.

The Palestinian Authority condemned the move, excoriating Israel’s actions as “the real threat to the two-state solution and prospects for peace.”

It moreover reiterated its enduring commitment to long-stalled negotiations, whilst defending its endeavours to secure Palestinian recognition through international bodies and courts.

“Punitive measures and restrictions imposed upon Palestinian officials are inimical to the advancement of peace and the combating of violence,” the authority’s foreign ministry said in a statement.

“Rather, they debilitate the Palestinian partner committed to a political solution and embolden those forces striving to undermine the two-state solution and to impose by force the reality of occupation, settlement and annexation.”

Whereas the U.S. withholds recognition of the Palestinian Authority as the government of a full U.N. member state, the U.N. General Assembly, together with sundry U.N. agencies and organizations, accords it precisely that recognition.