The Trump administration denied Mahmoud Abbas a visa to attend the United Nations General Assembly in New York for the second consecutive year. Abbas, the 88-year-old President of the Palestinian Authority, will again address the General Assembly through a pre-recorded video, speaking to the chamber of a world body headquartered in a country that will not allow him to enter.
The administration approved visas for Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and other senior members of Iran's delegation. Under the 1947 headquarters agreement between the United States and the United Nations, the US is legally required to permit access to foreign officials attending UN functions, and has generally honoured this obligation. Pezeshkian will speak at the General Assembly. CNN described the situation as virtually unprecedented: a head of state addressing the chamber of the world body whose host country is conducting an active war against his country. The closest historical comparison cited was Anwar Sadat's 1977 visit to Israel while Egypt and Israel were technically at war — but that trip was itself a peace overture. Pezeshkian's presence in New York is not a peace overture. It is a legal right.
The contrast between the two decisions is the argument. Abbas is the president of a political entity that has formally renounced violence, recognises Israel's right to exist and has been the designated Palestinian partner in every peace framework the United States has sponsored for three decades. His government controls portions of the occupied West Bank and coordinates daily security cooperation with Israel's military. The Trump administration has refused him entry to the United States for two consecutive years. Pezeshkian is the president of a country the United States has been bombing for seven months, whose forces have killed 18 American service members, whose proxies have struck Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait and Bahrain, and whose nuclear programme the US launched a war to destroy. He has a visa.
The logic is not contradictory from within the administration's framework. The 1947 agreement requires the US to grant access to heads of state attending the UN, and the administration has complied in Pezeshkian's case while applying its broader visa-denial powers to Abbas. Abbas does not have the same automatic legal protection under the headquarters agreement as a UNGA delegate — his visa was a discretionary decision. It has been declined twice. The practical effect is that the Palestinian president must address the world from a video screen while the Iranian president can walk into the building.
Abbas will tell the General Assembly — via pre-recorded video — that Palestine seeks a democratic, non-militarised state that respects the rule of law and human rights. He will appeal to Trump to fulfil commitments Trump made to Arab leaders in 2025 to prevent the annexation of Palestinian land. He will speak to a chamber in a country he cannot enter, representing a people whose statehood the Israeli prime minister he is excluded from meeting has declared impossible. Pezeshkian will speak to the same chamber in person. Trump will meet with Gulf leaders on the sidelines. The world body is in session. Its host country decides who can attend.
