The 2026 World Cup in the Americas will kick off in 10 days. For the first time, 48 teams will have the opportunity to participate in the world’s largest national football event. For almost every team present at the 2026 World Cup, the primary anxieties revolve around technical issues, player injuries, or weather conditions.
Among them all, however, one team finds itself in a fundamentally different situation: the squad dispatched to these games by the Islamic Republic of Iran.
This is perhaps the only team in the tournament whose own compatriots have no enthusiasm to watch its matches. Unlike in the past, they no longer feel thrilled or shed tears over its victories and defeats. They view it not as a national team, but as a representative of the ruling regime.
Leading up to the kickoff of the FIFA World Cup, we will examine, in a series of reports, how the Iranian football team became an inherent headache for FIFA in North America.
The Islamic Republic in US Security Dossiers
