White House says can not confirm Iran Quds chief Moscow visit

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, said all states were obliged to enforce the ban. Gen. Ghasem Soleimani from traveling to their nation, and the only exception is if the Security Council committee monitoring sanctions against Iran grants an exemption.

“To our knowledge no such exemption was granted, and we would know”, Power told reporters Friday.

Qasim Sulaimani, chief of the force which is an overseas arm of the Revolutionary Guards, has been subject to an worldwide travel ban and asset freeze by the UN Security Council since 2007.

Fox News, which first reported on the trip, said that Soleimani was in Moscow on July 24 to meet with Russian President Vladamir Putin and others.

The day General Soleimani flew back from Moscow to Iran was the day we believed that Russian Federation used cyber warfare against the Joint Chiefs. He left Moscow the following Sunday, July 26, at 10:25 p.m. on flight #5120, according to Western intelligence sources.

Two officials at the Russian Foreign Ministry said they could neither confirm nor deny a Sulaimani visit to Moscow.

United Nations member states are required to deny entry to blacklisted individuals.

“The truth of the matter is, inside of Iran, the people most opposed to the deal are the Revolutionary Guard, the Quds Force, hardliners who are implacably opposed to any cooperation with the worldwide community”, Obama said in a CNN interview that will be aired Sunday, asserting that his previous claims that Republicans were acting like those extremist groups was “factually accurate”. He was also shown on a magazine cover as a commander fighting the Islamic State group in Iraq.

In Moscow, Soleimani met with President Vladimir Putin and Russia’s defense minister.

Within the years following the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, American commanders repeatedly accused the Quds Pressure of backing Shiite militias implicated in assaults on American troops and Sunni civilians, expenses denied by Tehran.

A senior administration official in Washington said US sanctions on Soleimani would remain in place despite a deal between Tehran and world powers last month in which Iran agreed to curb its nuclear programme in exchange for easing sanctions.