The United States said Thursday that it would issue visas to some of Iran’s top officials to attend the U.N. General Assembly, even as the war between the countries shows few signs of ending.

The State Department said in an emailed statement that Iran’s “core delegation” would be allowed to enter the United States, “consistent with our host country obligations.” The statement added: “The delegation is smaller than last year.”

The delegation will be subject to restrictions, including a ban on shopping for wholesale or luxury goods, Tommy Pigott, a spokesperson for the State Department, wrote on social media.

The rule was put into place last year and prevents the visiting officials from shopping at Costco or other wholesale retailers without approval.

At the time, analysts said the Trump administration was seeking to embarrass Iranian officials over their shopping habits. In Iran, whose economy has been weakened by years of severe U.S. sanctions, images have circulated in the past showing officials who were visiting New York loading up vehicles with goods, apparently to bring back home.

“New York-area retailers: Be on guard, don’t become complicit in these violations,” Pigott said in the post Thursday.

World leaders will attend the General Assembly’s high-level week, starting Monday, to discuss pressing issues in person. It’s the 81st year of the gathering. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian is scheduled to address the meeting Wednesday.

The State Department announcement came days after it said that it would continue to deny visas to Palestinian officials because of actions taken by their governing and political groups that “internationalize the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” including trying to bring cases to international tribunals.

It is the second year in a row that the Trump administration has prevented Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority, from attending the U.N. gathering.

The decision to bar Abbas while allowing Pezeshkian was striking, analysts said. “It appears the Trump administration wants to say the era of Abbas is over,” said Jehad Harb, a Palestinian political analyst.

Abbas has led the Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited self-rule in parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, since 2005.

The United States and Israel launched strikes across Iran in late February, hitting military targets as well as killing Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the nation’s supreme leader for almost 37 years.

Initially, President Donald Trump said he began the war to curtail Iran’s nuclear program and to topple the country’s theocratic regime. Over the past few months, with those goals proving elusive, Trump’s focus has shifted to reopening the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has in effect closed in retaliation for the U.S. attacks.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Claire Moses/Dave Sanders
c. 2026 The New York Times Company