The Trump administration has barred Iranian diplomats based in or visiting New York from shopping at wholesale club shops such as Costco and buyinh luxury goods in the United States without specific permission from the State Department.<\/p>\n
In notices to be published this week in the Federal Register, the department\u2019s Office of Foreign Missions determined that diplomatic memberships in wholesale club shops as well as diplomats\u2019 ability to buy items such as watches, furs, jewellery, handbags, wallets, perfumes, tobacco, alcohol and cars are a \u201cbenefit\u201d requiring US government approval.<\/p>\n
However, the only country whose diplomats were specifically targeted is Iran<\/a>. Shops such as Costco have been a favourite of Iranian diplomats posted to and visiting New York because they are able to buy large quantities of products not available in their economically isolated country for relatively cheap prices and send them home.The move is another step in the Trump administration\u2019s crackdown on visas, including for leaders and diplomats seeking to serve as representatives at the United Nations<\/a>.<\/p>\n While world leaders are gathering this week for the high-profile annual meeting at the international body, the new US restrictions permanently apply to any Iranian diplomats representing their country at the UN year-round.<\/p>\n The determinations, which were posted online on Monday and to be printed on Tuesday, said Iranian diplomats and their dependents must \u201cobtain approval from the Department of State prior to: obtaining or otherwise retaining membership at any wholesale club store in the United States, to include but not limited to Costco, Sam\u2019s Club, or BJ\u2019s Wholesale Club, and acquiring items from such wholesale club stores through any means\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Trump administration has barred Iranian diplomats based in or visiting New York from shopping at wholesale club…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":174443,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,104076,941,104078,35113,104074,104077,801,104075,77951,2005,3,104079,80076,4121,5506,9805,4870,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-174442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-bjs-wholesale-club","tag-brazil","tag-clifton-seagroves","tag-costco","tag-department-of-state","tag-federal-register","tag-iran","tag-iranian-diplomats","tag-mahmoud-abbas","tag-new-york","tag-news","tag-office-of-foreign-missions","tag-sams-club","tag-state-department","tag-sudan","tag-the-trump-administration","tag-united-nations","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174442\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/174443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}