US revokes visa of former Iraqi finance minister

According to Kurdistan Press, the US State Department has revoked the visa of former Iraqi finance minister Taif Sami and barred her from entering the country. Fox News reported on Friday, August 28, 2026, citing a senior State Department official, that Washington has officially revoked Taif Sami’s visa.Dylan Johnson, the US assistant secretary of state for public affairs, told Fox News that under the Trump administration, visas for people Washington considers a threat to US national security will be revoked and that “terrorism suspects will never be allowed to remain in or enter the United States.” The decision came after then-US Secretary of State Antony Blinken presented Teif Sami with the International Women of Courage Award in 2022, when she was Iraq’s finance minister. At the time, Blinken had named Teif Sami as one of the country’s brave women for her work in combating corruption and bribery in the Iraqi budget process.According to Fox News, a number of prominent Republican lawmakers in the US Congress, including Joe Wilson and Greg Stubby, had previously accused the Sami faction of facilitating the financing of terrorism in the region through the Iraqi financial and banking system. They had called on the Trump administration to impose severe sanctions against him. Simultaneously with Washington's decision, the Iraqi judiciary also issued an arrest warrant for the Sami faction and put his name on the wanted list as part of an investigation into corruption cases and the waste of public funds in government contracts. According to the published information, the Sami faction is currently outside Iraq.