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The Trump administration has revoked the visa of Brazil’s ambassador to Washington, in retaliation for Brazil stalling approval of Trump’s pick to be ambassador in Brasília and for denying visas to US diplomats last month.

Getting into it: The announcement was made Tuesday by a senior State Department official, who confirmed that Ambassador Maria Luiza Ribeiro Viotti’s visa had been canceled while stressing she is not being expelled. “The action was that the visa of a senior diplomat here was revoked or cancelled. That is not the same thing as kicking the person out of the country,” the official said. She can stay, but if she leaves, she has to reapply, and the visa will be restored if Brazil approves Trump’s nominee.

“We communicated continually with the Brazilian government for weeks and have given the Brazilian government every opportunity to do the right thing, yet they have continually delayed and obfuscated,” the State Department said, calling it “a reciprocal action” and warning that “additional diplomatic options remain on the table.”

The dispute traces back to Daniel Perez, the Florida House speaker and a close ally of Secretary of State Marco Rubio whom Trump nominated on June 1. Standard diplomatic practice is for a country to quietly ask the host government whether a nominee is acceptable before announcing anything. Trump skipped that step. Brazilian officials took that as a slight and have sat on the approval ever since, saying the nomination remains under review and that they won’t decide until after the Oct. 4 first round of the presidential election.

Brazil rejects the American premise entirely. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s office called both justifications “false” and said the move “is not an isolated incident. It is part of a deliberate escalation of hostile measures against Brazil, motivated by ideological reasons.”

They noted that the US already has visa sanctions on Brazilian Supreme Court justices over what Brasília calls unfounded claims that former President Jair Bolsonaro is being politically persecuted, and argued that host countries face no deadline for vetting a nominee.

This all comes after Brazil blocked the visas of two top US officials who were set to meet with Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of the imprisoned former president and Lula’s chief rival in October’s election, during a July 27 to 30 trip to Brazil.

Brazilian officials called the trip “an unacceptable attempt to interfere in the country’s domestic political process.” The US maintains it was routine work and that “any insinuation of a ‘ploy’ to undermine a democratic nation’s election is a baseless lie.”