Which Iran do Iranian soccer players play for?
That question has been posed on several occasions in recent years, but no more so than now, as the U.S. and Israeli combined attack on the clerical regime ruling Iran continues apace.
Last week, the Iranian women’s soccer team was about to depart for home, having been defeated in the Asian Cup that is currently being hosted in Australia. By the time they reached the airport, no less than seven members of the squad had opted to accept the Australian government’s offer of asylum.
The offer was not mere point-scoring by the Australians. Having designated the regime’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization in September, following two Iranian-orchestrated attacks on Jewish targets in Sydney and Melbourne during 2024, Australia is pretty clear-eyed when it comes to the threat posed by Tehran and its proxies. The government knew that since the Iranian team had refused to sing the Islamic Republic’s anthem ahead of their match against South Korea, the players would be in danger upon their return home.
The episode in Australia is important on its own terms, but it carries added weight because the World Cup will be hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico in June and July. Iran has qualified for the coveted tournament for the sixth time since 1998, when they famously defeated the United States 2-1 in a match in the French city of Lyon.
Some might argue that the precedent of banning Russia from global sports should also be applied to Iran. To do so, however, would overlook the critical fact that in Iran—where fans who attended a match at Tehran’s cavernous Azadi Stadium the day after the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas pogrom in Israel chanted none-too-subtly, “Stick the Palestinian flag up your ass!”—soccer has frequently functioned as a tool for mobilizing opposition to the regime.
Strikingly, that opposition has been led by players and coaches, as well as the fans themselves. As far back as 2010, Iranian players were bravely making political statements, donning green armbands at a match in Seoul in solidarity with the protest movement that crystallized that year following Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s fraudulent victory in Iran’s presidential election.
One of the players to have conspicuously stuck his neck out is Ali Daei. Among soccer-obsessed Iranians, Daei, who played in both his own country and in Germany, is a legend on par with Leo Messi or Robin van Persie. At the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, which coincided with the wave of “Women, Life, Freedom” protests in Iran, Daei turned down an official invitation to attend. He explained to his supporters that he preferred to “be by your side in my homeland and express my sympathy with all the families who have lost loved ones these days.” He also pointedly told the ruling mullahs, “Instead of suppression, violence, arrests and accusing the people of Iran of being rioters, solve their problems.”
Just as the Iranian women’s team refused to sing the Islamic Republic anthem while in Australia, the men’s team did the same in Qatar, as did the U-23 team when they played a match this past January against the background of a mass protest movement that resulted in more than 30,000 Iranians slaughtered by the regime. In the same month, Iranian striker Mehdi Taremi scored a vital goal for Athens side Olympiakos in the Greek league but refused to celebrate. “I know that Olympiakos fans would like me to be happy, but I don’t celebrate the goals, in solidarity with what the Iranian people are going through,” he stated afterwards.
That anti-regime sentiment is equally visible among Iranian fans. At international matches in particular, the white, red and green colors of the Iranian flag are on display; however, the lion that once adorned the Iranian monarchist flag is a far more common sight than the regime’s Islamist “God is Great” symbol. Should Iran’s team make it to the United States to participate in the World Cup, we can confidently predict that Team Melli’s supporters will opt for the former flag over the current one, especially in Los Angeles, the center of the Iranian diaspora, where they have two matches scheduled against New Zealand and Belgium.
Indeed, the debate about Iran’s participation has even reached the White House. Speaking to Gianni Infantino, head of the international soccer body FIFA, as the attack on the Tehran regime was midway through its second week, U.S. President Donald Trump reportedly said that Iran was “welcome” to play.
There will always be those who say that politics has no place in sports. The reality is that it does, whether we like it or not. We couldn’t ignore politics at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany, when Palestinian terrorists massacred 11 Israeli athletes and coaches. We couldn’t ignore politics at the 1978 World Cup in Argentina, when the final was played in a stadium a stone’s throw from a detention center where the military regime was torturing dissidents. And we couldn’t ignore politics at the last World Cup in Qatar, when matches were played in stadiums constructed by foreign slave labor—modern-day pyramids that cost the lives of more than 6,000 migrant workers.
Iran should therefore be encouraged to play at this year’s World Cup, especially as the regime is now openly talking about withdrawing from the competition in a transparent bid to both underline its victim status and head off the prospect of Iranian fans using the matches as platforms to oppose the Islamic Republic.
Should the regime quit, that won’t dent the pride with which ordinary Iranians, whether inside or outside the country, regard their team. That support is an expression of their national identity, rather than any love for the monsters presently in power. You might even say that when Iran plays soccer these days, it does so against the regime, rather than in its favor.
