Secretary Rubio's State Department kicked two Iranian diplomats out of the U.S. after they stayed in New York past the U.N. meeting, Iran calls the expulsion fake.
Two members of Iran's United Nations General Assembly delegation were removed from the country after they remained in New York long after the session ended. A State Department official said the pair had been asked to leave and were found still in the city, then forced out.
Daily Mail reporting described the action as following the latest breakdown in negotiations over the Iran war, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio pressing a harder line on Tehran's presence on U.S. soil.
Iran's foreign minister rejected the account and called pride in a "fake" expulsion inappropriate. The clash lands amid a closed Strait of Hormuz, surging oil prices, and a G7 move to tap emergency fuel reserves.
Members of Iran's UNGA delegation were told to leave the United States last Monday after the United Nations meeting wrapped up. Two of them did not go.
A State Department official put the outcome in plain terms.
"Secretary Rubio means business. Two more members of the Iranian delegation were found still in New York long after the UN General Assembly had passed. They have now been kicked out of the country."
The Washington Examiner reported the pair were sent home Friday night and Saturday morning, confirming the State Department carried out the removals days after the earlier departure request.
That sequence matches a broader pattern under Rubio at State, including when Rubio ordered Iranian U.N. diplomats out after talks went nowhere.
Names of the two diplomats were not released. Where they were staying in New York was not detailed. The mechanism of removal was described only as a kick-out after they overstayed.
Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Abbas Araghchi offered a different account in a Sunday post on X. He said the schedule, not U.S. force, explained the departures.
"All Iranian diplomats who attended UNGA, except one who departed earlier, left as scheduled."
Araghchi went further, attacking the framing itself.
"Taking pride in fake diplomat 'expulsion' is inappropriate for the head of any diplomatic corps. It oozes of desperation and defeat, and is inconsistent with UN host nation obligations."
Breitbart cited reporting that Rubio ordered Iranian diplomats attending the U.N. General Assembly to leave after low-level talks on the sidelines failed, with sources describing the Iranians as having overstayed their welcome, a highly unusual rebuke. Iran's U.N. mission called such accounts baseless and said the State Department was promoting them after achieving nothing.
Americans have already severely limited Iranian presence in the country amid the U.S. conflict with Iran. The latest removals fit that tighter posture.
While the diplomats fought over exit timing, Iran's parliament speaker drew a hard line on the waterway that moves a large share of the world's oil.
Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf said the Americans have floated proposals through a mediator while saying something different in public. He rejected drawn-out talks and one-sided demands.
"The position of the Islamic Republic of Iran is completely clear and firm, and the Strait of Hormuz will not be opened until our seven conditions, based on the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding, are met."
Those seven conditions trace to a June agreement. Iran has vowed to keep the strait closed until Washington meets them. The closure has driven huge spikes in global oil prices and sent diesel costs climbing fast.
On Friday, G7 leaders agreed to release 100 million barrels of diesel and crude oil from emergency reserves. The step came under pressure tied to the energy shock.
Readers watching energy security will also recall how Trump warned the U.N. on Iran in a sweeping General Assembly address that raised the stakes for Tehran.
The New York removals are not the first curb on Iranian travel this cycle. Back in July, as the United States hosted the World Cup with Canada and Mexico, President Trump warned the Iranian team not to come, for their "own life and safety." The team moved its base from Arizona to Mexico. Nearly a dozen members of its delegation were later denied visas.
Separate from the UNGA pair, Rubio has moved against a wider set of Iranian officials. Fox News reported he revoked U.S. travel privileges for Iranian senior officials and their family members over the regime's crackdown on protesters, citing more than 6,200 killed since late December and nearly 17,100 arrests. A State Department message said those who profit from that oppression are not welcome to benefit from the U.S. immigration system.
That same enforcement mindset has shown up in other Rubio-led actions, from removing 25,000 migrants whose home countries refused returns to steps aimed at stripping visas from birth-tourism operators.
Host-nation rules at the United Nations give accredited diplomats a lane into New York for the General Assembly. They do not create an open-ended right to linger after the meeting ends. When two members of the Iranian delegation stayed past the ask-out date, the State Department treated the overstay as a problem to fix, not a courtesy to extend.
Qalibaf's message was that the era of dragging out the process is over. Iran's public position remains the seven conditions first set down in June. U.S. officials, by the Iranian account, speak one way in the media and another through mediators.
Araghchi's Sunday denial tried to flip the script, portraying the expulsion story as theater and the U.S. as desperate. The State Department official's account was shorter: the diplomats were still in New York, and then they were not.
Rubio's office has also kept a close eye on other sensitive foreign flashpoints, including when a Russian plague lab death locked down a Siberian hospital under his watch.
What remains unclear is the full text of the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding, the precise calendar dates behind "last Monday" and "this week," and the names of the two diplomats removed. The core sequence is not murky: an ask to leave after UNGA, a finding that two members were still in New York, and a State Department decision to put them out.
Soft treatment of a hostile regime's overstaying envoys would tell every other capital that U.S. deadlines are optional. Rubio chose the opposite message, and the oil shock, the closed strait, and the failed sideline talks only underline why firmness matters more than diplomatic theater.