Sometimes, it doesn’t take very long at all for the consequences of bad policies to be felt by innocent people. That was the case at London’s Heathrow airport on Tuesday when Rana Rahimpour, a British-Iranian dual citizen, was denied entry into the US. As the Guardian reported, Rahimpour was on her way to visit her brother and attend a surprise birthday party. Despite being British, she was rejected because of her Iranian citizenship.



In December, the US Congress passed a new law seeking to stop terrorists from traveling freely to the US. With a mind to thwarting the frightening prospect of an attack in the US by a growing crop of radicalized Muslims from western countries, the law changed the rules of the visa waivers afforded to citizens of some 38 countries.



People from those countries used to be able to come to the US without obtaining a visa, but now if they hold dual citizenship from Syria, Iraq, Sudan or Iran or have visited any of those countries over the past five years, they must obtain a visa in advance through the normal processes, including an in-person interview.

Rahimpour, however, is no terrorist. She is a news presenter at BBC Persian, the Farsi-language outlet of the United Kingdom’s state broadcaster. That carries with it a special irony: far from being radicalized in the vein of Iran’s Islamic Republicans, BBC Persian instead serves as a bête noire of the Iranian government.



Now, thanks to the new visa waiver rules, BBC journalists of Iranian origin can add the US Congress to their list of antagonists, even if for the more minor offense of giving them an undue burden to travel to the US. That burden has been extended despite the Iranian government’s hatred for these BBC reporters. It’s hard to escape the conclusion that the US government hates Iran so much that they’re willing to pour their hatred onto all Iranians.



That’s evident in the extension of the new visa waiver restrictions to anyone who holds dual citizenship. That means that some of my great uncles living in Europe who served time in Iran’s revolutionary prisons, even facing looming death sentences (that, thankfully, were never carried out), must now jump through extra hoops to visit family like me in the US.



Yet these restrictions won’t keep Americans safe. The restrictions would have been useless for stopping the San Bernardino attack, which was carried out by a US citizen and his wife, a permanent US resident, both of Pakistani extraction, and there are better ways to filter out would-be travelers to the US like the Paris attackers. Indeed, the origins of the Paris attackers ranged between a handful of countries, some of which – like Algeria and Morocco – are totally unaffected by the new restrictions.



Think back over the many alleged terrorist plots against America that the US government has publicized. I can think of only one such plot – the curious case of a hapless, failed used car salesman who sought to assassinate Saudi Arabia’s ambassador the US – where Iran or Iranians were in any way involved.



Recent terror attacks by so-called lone wolves and Isis-inspired groups were coordinated by people with national origins in a lot of the Muslim world, but almost exclusively from majority Sunni countries – like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, who are also not included in the new visa waiver restrictions – because Isis is a radical Sunni group. And that’s exactly why Isis and Shia Iran are mortal enemies.



This restriction is ineffective and non-nonsensical. It only makes sense when you consider Congress’s Iran hawkishness – think of all the bipartisan attempts to kill Barack Obama’s now-fruitful diplomacy – and the fact that it is supported in this demeanor by a bevy of right-of-center pro-Israel think tanks.



One of the few think tankers vociferously defending the new visa waiver restrictions is the sanctions architect Mark Dubowitz, of the neoconservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Dubowitz has supported the visa waiver restrictions exactly as part of his monomaniacal opposition to the nuclear deal with Iran – which is really what the Iran measure is all about.



It’s no secret that Congress hates Iranians; one need only remember the spectacle of a leading Republican anti-Iran hawk calling for sanctions against Iran that would “take the food out of the mouths” of ordinary Iranians whose government represses their political will. But this takes it to a new level – not only because it affects those Iranians in Europe and elsewhere who themselves fled the Islamic Republic, but especially because it stands to curtail the rights of free travel for Iranian-Americans.



That’s what would happen if, in keeping with the basic tenet of reciprocity in the visa waiver program, European countries decided to restrict visa-free travel for Iranian-Americans. Congress hatred for Iran and Iranians, in other words, is so strong that it looks likely to extend to American citizens of Iranian extraction, too.



Rahimpour, then, is only the first Iranian to fall victim to a bogus, meaningless provision of law that does nothing to shore up American security. There will certainly be more, some of whom will almost certainly be the very people Congress is supposed to represent.