For Iran’s diaspora, a tough World Cup call: To support the national team or protest – or both?

When Iran’s national soccer team walks onto American soil this summer for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, it will do so against the backdrop of an Iranian government crackdown against protesters in January, an ongoing war launched by the U.S. and Israel in February, and a four-month digital blackout affecting some 92 million people. It has left many Iranian fans feeling conflicted about who exactly they’ll be cheering for.

Even before a ball has been kicked, the tension has been clear among not only supporters but team members, too. Iranian players were issued visas to the United States at the 11th hour, and the team only arrived at their training base in Tijuana, Mexico, days before the tournament kicks off.

That came after a request to move their camp from Arizona, citing concerns over unfair treatment on U.S. soil, a move that required the formal endorsement of FIFA before it could proceed. Even with the team finally getting settled, however, multiple Iranian soccer fans have been denied visas to the U.S. Iran’s soccer association has also said its ticket allocation had been denied, leaving fans who had made the trek disappointed.

With a host nation actively at war with a competing one for the first time in World Cup history, the pitch will be a stage not just for soccer but for grief, resistance and competing nationalism. The Iranian diaspora, buffeted by the one-two punch of internal crackdowns and external interventions, now faces a deeply unsettling question: How do you express pride in one’s national team without tacitly supporting the government that it represents?

Diasporic identity crises

Along with many Iranians, mainly expatriates in the U.S., I plan to attend Iran’s opening game against New Zealand on June 15 in Los Angeles. The location is important – Los Angeles is a city that is home to the largest Iranian diaspora, so much so that it is often referred to as “Tehrangeles” within the community.

It is also a community among whom feelings toward the Islamic Republic run deep, with many of them having left Iran during or following the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Many in the community have remained loyal to the deposed Pahlavi regime and the crown prince, Reza, and going so far as celebrating the joint U.S.-Israeli led war on Iran.

It is in this community that the Iranian national team – colloquially known as Team Melli to reflect the Farsi word for national – will face battle not only against New Zealand, but also the conflicted emotions of its ethnic brethren.

With the memory of the January protests still raw, calls have been circulating among some Iranian Americans to formally protest and boycott the occasion. Proposals range from purchasing tickets, only to leave seats conspicuously empty, to booing the national anthem and withholding any celebration of Iranian goals.

Supporters have also been urged within Iranian American communities to resist FIFA’s attempts to prohibit non-Islamic Republic flags inside stadiums, with some Iranian expats suggesting on social media of spray-painting over the symbols on the current flag, carrying plain green, white and red alternatives into the ground, or wearing clothing bearing political slogans. Others have proposed exposing politically motivated tattoos or using stuffed animals to caricature Iranian leaders.

In return, Mehdi Taj, the president of the Iranian Football Association, issued a statement demanding respect, stating: “We need a guarantee there, for our trip, that they have no right to insult the symbols of our system, especially the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.”

There is a broader question that Iran’s World Cup appearance forces into view, and it sits uncomfortably alongside FIFA’s own record. While the governing body of world soccer awarded President Donald Trump its inaugural Peace Prize ahead of the tournament, it is now looking the other way as the U.S. remains at war and denies visas to would-be participants and spectators. The collision of sport and statecraft is nothing new, from the 1936 Berlin Olympics to the Soviet boycott of Los Angeles in 1984. But it has rarely been managed with such apparent indifference to its own contradictions.

When sport becomes a theater for competing political claims, it is the integrity of the game itself that is diminished. One is entitled to ask whether the notion of sport existing purely on its own terms — especially on the global stage — has ever been anything more than a convenient fiction.

Collision of politics and sport

Yet here lies the puzzle. Soccer occupies a place in Iranian life that borders on the sacred. One need only look to the fierce devotion surrounding Tehran’s great rival teams Persepolis and Esteghlal, a contest that ranks among the most intense club rivalries in world soccer, or to the scenes of street celebration that have swept Iran whenever the national team has won games at previous World Cups.

The memory of defeating the U.S. at the 1998 World Cup in France and the rematch in 2022 speaks to how deeply the game is woven into the fabric of Iranian culture. Supporting Team Melli has long been a source of collective pride, a point of unity that transcends politics and generation, regardless of religion, political views and social class. This creates the dilemma for the fans watching in Los Angeles and Seattle for Iran’s three group games.

In Arizona, where I teach global politics at Arizona State University, several members of the Iranian diaspora articulated this dilemma to me, capturing the tension at the heart of current events. One person invoked the sporting rivalries of the Cold War as a reminder of soccer’s capacity to transcend conflict, yet acknowledged that the wounds of the January protests remained too raw for many in the diaspora to set aside. Another was more straightforwardly hopeful, expressing a wish to see Iran progress in the tournament and a belief that success on the pitch might, however tentatively, cut across political divisions.

Yet for those who have watched the events of recent years with grief and fury, cheering on a team that represents the Islamic Republic feels, to some, like an act of complicity. For its part, the Iranian government – as well as some Iranian critics – would argue that the national team stands apart from politics entirely. From this vantage point, soccer is a matter of national identity and cultural heritage that belongs to all Iranians regardless of their views on those in power. It is, moreover, a moment of proud participation, according to one Iranian official, and that to deny the players their support is to punish athletes for the decisions of politicians.

The protests that shook Iran, and the complex political landscape that followed, have left the diaspora navigating questions that go far beyond soccer.

The Islamic Republic, whatever one’s view of its conduct, remains the sovereign government of a nation with a rich and fiercely proud culture, and the players on the pitch represent that culture as much as they represent the state.

That they do so on the soil of a country with which Iran is actively at war renders this perhaps the most politically charged sporting occasion in living memory – one in which every goal, every flag and every empty seat carries a meaning that extends well beyond the 90 minutes. In that sense, the World Cup has not created a division so much as it has given an existing one a global stage.

Shirvin Zeinalzadeh does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.