TEHRAN -- Iranian traditional vocalist Alireza Ghorbani could not perform in California last week after U.S. agents interrogated him for hours and denied him entry.
Organizers of the sold-out celebration of the Persian New Year, Nowruz, said the 49-year-old was detained by agents in an airport in Toronto on Friday.
“They interrogated him for nearly four hours and eventually told him his visa was going to be canceled and he could no longer travel to the U.S.,” Alireza Ardekani, executive director for the Los Angeles-area nonprofit Farhang Foundation, said.
Ardekani later learned Ghorbani’s temporary detention and denial of travel was connected to his military service at the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC).
Beginning at age 18, Iranian men are required to complete up to two years of military service.
The White House, under the Trump administration, designated the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization in 2019. It was the first time Washington had designated an element of a foreign state as a terrorist entity, setting a bad precedent in international relations.
In response, Iran declared all American forces in the Middle East terrorists and called the U.S. government a sponsor of terrorism.
The U.S. has imposed sanctions for decades, targeting Iran’s energy sector and a range of exports of goods and services.
Under U.S. sanctions law, people are forced to apply for specific licenses when they seek to be exempted from prohibited transactions, and even for allowed activities, there are complicated reporting requirements.
In practice that means hundreds of thousands of Iranian Americans with family and financial ties to Iran can face a complex set of burdens and hurdles in their lives, jobs and education.
In addition to the wave of Iranian students who have been denied visas at the last minute, under sanctions law, faculty members are also barred from traveling to Iran for research or other work without approval from the U.S. treasury department.
In 2019, Iranian researchers faced criminal prosecution when they attempted to do stem-cell research in the U.S.