The Senate approved a bill Monday to bar a former hostage-taker tapped to be Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations from entering the United States.
By voice vote, Republicans and Democrats united behind the legislation sponsored by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, that reflected congressional animosity toward Tehran and its selection of Hamid Aboutalebi. Iran’s envoy choice was a member of a Muslim student group that held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days in the 1979 seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.
The “nomination is a deliberate and unambiguous insult to the United States,” Cruz said in remarks on the Senate floor in which he described Iran’s anti-Americanism since 1979 and added, “This is not the moment for diplomatic niceties.”
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