Araghchi rejects the U.S. claim that Iranian diplomats were “expelled”: “They left as planned”

Iran’s Foreign Minister, Abbas Araghchi, rejected American claims that Iranian diplomats were “expelled” from the United States. “All Iranian diplomats who took part in the UN General Assembly, except one who left earlier, left as planned,” Araghchi wrote in a post on X, as Al Jazeera‘s live coverage of the U.S.–Iran war reports.

The reaction comes after Axios cited an unnamed American official, according to whom two Iranian diplomats had been expelled from the U.S. for what the official called “inappropriate behavior” during the UN General Assembly. To boast about expelling diplomats is “inappropriate” and “smacks of despair and defeat,” Araghchi said.

Earlier in the day, the U.S. State Department had announced that two Iranian diplomats had been expelled from New York after ignoring a departure order — a development Tehran categorically denies. The exchange of accusations comes in the midst of stalled U.S.–Iran talks, where Washington approved visas for the Iranian delegation to the UN General Assembly, but the deadlock over Tehran’s seven conditions and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz continues.