Rubio Orders Deportation of Iranian Hostage Crisis Spokesperson's Son
Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the deportation of the son of Masoumeh Ebtekar, the woman known to Americans as "Screaming Mary" or "Mary of Tehran" who served as the English-language spokesperson during the 1979 Iran hostage crisis that held 52 Americans captive for 444 days. Ebtekar's son Seyed Eissa Hashemi, his wife Maryam Tahmasebi, and their son were detained by ICE in Los Angeles on April 11, 2026.
"Her family should never have been allowed to benefit from the extraordinary privilege of living in our country," Rubio posted on X. "America can never become home for anti-American terrorists or their families, and under the Trump Administration, it never will."
The State Department's statement notably did not accuse the three of any specific unlawful or harmful acts. Their legal status was revoked based solely on family connection to Ebtekar. Both Hashemi and Tahmasebi worked as professors at The Chicago School in Los Angeles. Hashemi entered the United States on an F-1 student visa in 2014 under the Obama administration and received permanent residency through the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program in June 2016.
Who is "Screaming Mary"?
Masoumeh Ebtekar was just 19 years old when Iranian students stormed the US Embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979. Born in Tehran in 1960, she had spent six years as a child in Upper Darby Township, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia, where her father studied at the University of Pennsylvania. She developed near-perfect, American-accented English, which made her the natural choice as spokesperson.
For 444 days, she appeared repeatedly on American television defending the embassy seizure and relaying demands. The State Department alleges she "crafted propaganda falsely showing the humane treatment of the hostages, arranging staged interviews in which American hostages were pressured to describe their treatment in positive terms, even as they were being held in solitary confinement, blindfolded and starved, and subjected to physical and psychological terror, including beatings and mock executions."
She was portrayed in the 2012 film Argo, credited as "Tehran Mary." In a 1998 New York Times interview, she described the hostage-taking as "the best direction that could have been taken" by Iran and has never expressed regret for her role.
After the crisis, Ebtekar rose through Iran's political ranks as a reformist. She served as Vice President of Iran in two separate periods, as head of the Department of Environment under President Khatami (1997-2005), making her the first woman to serve as VP of Iran, and as VP for Women and Family Affairs under President Rouhani (2017-2021). PBS Frontline called her "one of the highest-ranking women in the Muslim world."
A pattern of targeting Iranian-connected families
The deportation is part of a systematic Trump administration campaign targeting Iranian nationals with regime connections during the ongoing war. In recent weeks, ICE detained Hamideh Soleimani Afshar, niece of assassinated IRGC commander Qasem Soleimani, and her daughter in Los Angeles. The daughter of former SNSC Secretary Ali Larijani and her husband were deported and barred from re-entry. Three former IRGC members were also deported.
The administration has framed these actions as wartime security measures. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called the effort a "top priority." Reports indicate dozens of Iranian nationals have been deported over the past year, with hundreds more potentially facing removal.
The 1979 hostage crisis remains one of the most emotionally charged events in US-Iran relations, it led to the severing of diplomatic ties that persist to this day, 47 years later. The crisis was resolved only on January 20, 1981, the day of Ronald Reagan's inauguration, when Iran released all 52 hostages after 444 days.