Tijuana (Mexico) (AFP) – Iran’s World Cup squad is expected to arrive in Mexico early Sunday under the shadow of a bitter diplomatic row between Tehran and Washington, after the United States refused to issue visas for some team support staff. The dispute erupted just days before Thursday’s kickoff of the 2026 World Cup, which is being jointly hosted by the United States, Mexico, and Canada.
The Iran team departed Turkey, where they had been training, on Saturday bound for Mexico, Iranian television announced. They are expected to arrive early Sunday in Tijuana, a border city in northwest Mexico where they will be based for the tournament’s duration. Iran are due to play their three group games on US soil, marking the first World Cup to see a host nation receive the team of a country it is at war with. Iran switched their base to Tijuana from their original base in Tucson, Arizona, in late May.
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The team spent nearly three weeks at a training camp in Antalya, using their time in Turkey to apply for visas to travel to Mexico, Canada, and the United States. On the eve of their departure for Mexico, the players received their US visas, Washington’s envoy to Turkey Tom Barrack said on X late Friday. However, Iran’s embassy to Turkey issued a furious response, saying support staff had been denied visas — 15 administrative and management staff are concerned, an Iranian diplomat and state TV reported. “You have now escalated the deliberate and discriminatory treatment against Iran’s national football team to its highest level,” the embassy wrote Saturday on X, calling for world football’s governing body FIFA “to hold the US accountable for violations of its rules.”
Adding to the tensions, Iran’s ambassador to Mexico said Saturday the squad had been notified that under their visa conditions, the team must enter and leave US soil on the same day as their matches. “We can enter in the morning and we must leave the same day,” Iran’s envoy Abolfazl Pasandideh told reporters. That appeared to contradict what the team’s spokesman Amir Mahdi Alavi told state TV earlier. “The visas issued for the national team are multiple-entry visas, and the national team will arrive at the match venue one day before the first game and, for the following games, two days prior to each match,” Alavi said.
FIFA rules for World Cups stipulate that a team’s coach must give a news conference on the eve of the match at the venue where the game will be played. Iran’s Football Federation, whose chief Mehdi Taj was reportedly among those denied a visa, has described the decision as “political interference in sport in its worst form.” In response, a US administration official confirmed that “the visas necessary for Iran to compete in the World Cup, including for athletes and necessary support staff, have been issued.”
Without directly addressing the matter of those whose visas were refused, the official added: “We will not allow the Iranian team to abuse this system to sneak terrorists into the United States under false pretenses.” In April, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated that any problem would not be with the Iranian players but “some of the other people (they) would want to bring with them,” suggesting ties to the Revolutionary Guards, a group on the US terror blacklist. Taj himself is reported to be a former Guards member, according to Iranian media in the diaspora.
The visa kerfuffle has impacted the Iraqi team as well. The US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency stated Saturday that Iraq’s national team had landed in Chicago on Friday, and that two members were subjected to additional screening. “Following inspection, one traveler was admitted to the United States. The second traveler, a photographer and NOT a player on the team, was determined to be inadmissible and was denied entry,” CBP said in a statement.
The Middle East erupted when the United States and Israel started bombing Iran on February 28. An April 8 ceasefire, which largely halted the fighting, has come under strain from recent exchanges of fire. Iran are in Group G and will play New Zealand and Belgium in Los Angeles on June 15 and 21, followed by a game against Egypt in Seattle on June 26.
© 2024 AFP
