Hardline Iranian MP Ali Haji-Deligani said on January 16 that more than 100 of Iran’s top officials are holders of US permanent residency green cards, Tasnim News Agency reported.

Various political factions in Iran are presently seeking to out opponents and their family members who live in Western countries as dual nationals. At least two Iranian officials have lately been sacked from government posts after investigations discovered they had foreign papers. A US green card is a particular red rag to hardliners at the moment given Donald Trump's bellicose attacks on Iran and hostility to continuing with the nuclear deal that is supposed to offer the country a chance to recover from its severe economic difficulties.

“A 33-page report, with 40 pages of documents and appendices, shows that one hundred of the country’s senior officials have either dual nationality or carry US green cards,” claimed Haji-Deligani. He explicitly accused Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif of negligence when it comes to the issue, stopping short of accusing him in public of having dual allegiances. It is known that Zarif, who spent several years in the US working for the Iranian mission at the UN, has children who are US citizens working in that country.

“While probing the case, we found out that there was no supervision over those with dual citizenship at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,” Deligani said. He went on to attack the Ministry of the Interior, saying that “the ministry has failed to identify those who have dual citizenship”.

In defence of the current government administration and President Hassan Rouhani, Intelligence Minister Mahmoud Alavi dismissed Deligani’s allegations, insisting that “there are no managers with dual citizenship in the cabinet”.

Previously, a conservative representative of the second city of Mashhad, Javad Karimi Goddousi, has claimed some Rouhani administration members have dual nationality (many studied in the US), and noted that one of Rouhani’s nominees to head a ministry has a non-Iranian wife.