PHILADELPHIA – March 14, 2025 – Ebrahim Rasool, South Africa’s ambassador to the United States, has been officially declared persona non grata by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and expelled from Washington. This follows an exposé and outreach by the Middle East Forum (MEF) warning of the diplomat’s links to terrorism and history of extremist statements.
In announcing the expulsion, Secretary Rubio stated:
“South Africa’s Ambassador to the United States is no longer welcome in our great country. Ebrahim Rasool is a race-baiting politician who hates America and hates [President Donald Trump]. We have nothing to discuss with him and so he is considered PERSONA NON GRATA.”
Rasool had already been “shut out of Washington” in recent months, failing to secure routine meetings with State Department officials and key Republican figures after President Trump took office in January. According to the news outlet Semafor, this snubbing drew “frustrations in Pretoria.”
MEF Islamist Watch director Sam Westrop first documented Rasool’s extremism in a December 2024 article at Focus on Western Islamism detailing Rasool’s meetings with top Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad officials and his support for Iran’s regime and its terrorist proxy Hezbollah. The ambassador is also entrenched in American Islamist organizations, with close ties to the Virginia-based SAAR network, a collection of businesses, nonprofits, schools, and journals investigated by federal authorities for links to international terrorism.
President Joe Biden accepted Rasool’s diplomatic credentials without media fanfare in the final days of his administration. Before arriving in Washington, Rasool helped persuade the International Court of Justice that Israel seeks to “commit genocide” in Gaza.
MEF told administration officials and members of Congress of Rasool’s extremism, including his social media posts criticizing President Trump. Of Rasool’s inability to land meetings with policymakers, Semafor noted a “document”—MEF’s—that “is being shared in Republican foreign policy circles” that prompted Capitol Hill staffers to blacklist the ambassador.
“Ambassador Rasool’s extremism and close involvement with entities and regimes violently hostile to the United States afford perfectly reasonable grounds for the Trump administration to send him home,” Westrop said. “The South African ANC government knew this, and would have been wise to have preempted such a move by replacing Rasool themselves.”
“The United States is not a playground for diplomats who cozy up to foreign adversaries and fraternize with terrorist leaders,” said MEF Action director Benjamin Baird. “We applaud the president’s decision to exercise his inherent constitutional authority and hand Rasool his walking papers.”
