Iran president plans New York trip after threatening to turn city "into ruins"

Iran has said its hardline president Ebrahim Raisi will attend the U.N. General Assembly in the city next month, in an announcement that came only days after state media in the Islamic republic made a nuclear threat against the region.

On August 1, Iranian government spokesman Ali Bahadori-Jahromi said "preliminary planning" had been undertaken for Raisi to go to the U.N. General Assembly, which opens on September 13.

A long-standing opposition group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), told Newsweek that the U.S. State Department should not grant a visa for Raisi, who still faces U.S. sanctions over human rights violations. 

But it comes on the heels of a video on Iranian state media which said that Tehran could use its nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), "to turn New York into ruins and hell in case of a hostile act by the US".

The video from Bisimchimedia, linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which is on the U.S. list of foreign terrorist organizations, boasts about Iran's nuclear program, which has been a thorn in the side of relations between Tehran and the west.