As strikes on American soil go, the two goals scored by Iran’s national football team brought to their players some sense of sweet vindication as their strained and politically charged participation in this World Cup began on Monday night. Twice they responded through Ramin Rezaeian (32) and Mohammed Mohebi (64) to a pair of exquisite goals from New Zealand’s Elijah Just to force a 2-2 draw in the heart of Los Angeles.This emotive opening game coincided with the latest flimsy peace agreement announced by the Trump administration desperate to end the war of bombardment it initiated on Iran last February. All weekend, the entire focus of a team that sits in 20th place in the Fifa ranking revolved around the diplomatic saga over their visas, their enforced switch from Tucson to Tijuana, Mexico, where they trained, and their contentious arrival into Lotus Land on Sunday.“It’s a global event; there are three to four billion people watching and the United States could make much warmer, friendlier gestures and create a better image for itself,” winger Aliriza Jahanbakhsh told ESPN in an interview earlier this weekend.“This visa thing ... when you look back at the last three to four months there are a lot worse things that have happened to our country. At the end of the day 15 visas are denied ... what is accomplished by that?” he said before rejecting the idea that the Iranians might not be safe in the United States.“For sure we are safe. This is a responsibility of the USA and they have to do that. Why not? Are you sure about your country? How do you see us ... as politician guys or as sportsmen?”That was also a question for the vast Iranian-American diaspora living in Los Angeles to grapple with in recent weeks. A small but vocal group of Iranian expatriates awaited to protest the team when the official bus pulled into the Westdrift Hotel in Manhattan Beach. Many carried the pre-revolutionary flag bearing the sun and lion symbol of the monarchy deposed in 1979, and carried banners denouncing the team’s affiliation with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). On Monday, other protesters distributed T-shirts bearing images of the faces of people disappeared by the Islamic regime.“Iran’s football federation is controlled by the IRGC,” Nasser Shariff, the president of the California Society for Democracy in Iran, told a local television network.“They are a terrorist organisation and if Fifa believes in its own principles they need to give a red card to Iran’s football federation. They do not have a place on the world stage. So, we are saying enough is enough.”A member of the Iranian diaspora at a protest against the Iranian government ahead of the Fifa World Cup match between Iran and New Zealand in Inglewood, California. Photograph: EPA It’s beyond question that the Iran team are being used as a symbol of resistance and inspiration by the relentless social media campaign the IRGC and the regime adopted within hours of the February strikes and the death of its supreme leader, the Ayatollah Khamenei. Whether they have a choice is a different matter. One social media post depicted the team walking out of a tunnel with the players holding the hands of child-mascots who are framed in angelic silhouette. As they stand on the field of play, the children vanish and the players are left holding schoolbags, an obvious reference to the bombing of the Minab school in which 168 Iranian school girls were killed, for which the Trump administration has yet to accept responsibility.Mehdi Taremi, the Olympiakos striker who has hit 56 goals in 106 appearances for Iran, explained how he has been dealing with the strangeness, and pressure, of preparing to play a football match in a country at war with his own.“It’s our family that is involved in the situation right now. The important thing is family and that’s why it’s so hard to focus on just football but as professional players we have to do it. We are here to do our best job. About myself, I just put the phone away, don’t read the news, which is so hard. What has helped me is the different zone-time because when we are awake they are asleep. That’s a help. But after the day your brain goes there thinking about the situation in Iran and that unfortunately is not good for us.”On Sunday, in Los Angeles, Taremi was again asked about the complexity of playing a major tournament in a country that laid siege on his own for the past four months.“From the first day we entered there has been a lot of tension at this World Cup. Certainly, when there is a lot of tension and confusion, that beautiful thing that is always talked about in Fifa – about peace, tranquillity, happiness for the people of each country involved in that game – does not happen.”Six of the Iranian team has not played football since February, when the domestic league was suspended – a 13,000 missile-and-ballistics strike barrage, with the instant wipeout of the leading regime figures, mass destruction and thousands of instant deaths will have that effect on sports competitions.For the hundreds of thousands of Iranians living in Los Angeles, which has the largest concentration of Persians in the United States, the arrival of the Iran team during such a perilous diplomatic moment provoked a painful and even impossible conflict of emotions. To some, clearly, their presence was an unacceptable symbol of a regime they loathe. To others, the players on the field were their countrymen who, despite their exalted and prominent positions, were prone to the same intimidations and fears as every other Iranian citizen living under the brutal restrictions imposed by the leadership.In the Sofi stadium, the playing of their anthem provoked what was described by those present as a combination of cheers and boos. But again, whether the booing was directed at the athletes or the decades of oppression and horrific violence inflicted by the regime is open to interpretation.Still, as the evening deepened, it was clear that those in the stands in Inglewood were, over the 90 minutes and stoppage time, inevitably sucked into the human drama of what became a sensationally open and true-hearted contest between the teams – that strange, uncanny power that sport and sport alone possesses.So it finished 2-2 and for the first time, in the stands and on the field: Iranian smiles and joy.Iran’s US football odyssey has officially begun.Four years ago, it was the United States team who finished Iran’s hopes in Qatar with a 1-0 victory. This time, the football teams could yet meet in Dallas in a second-round knock-out game should they finish second in their respective groups. That match would take place on the eve of Independence Day. Probably be a hot ticket.