Ahead of Iran’s World Cup opener against New Zealand at SoFi Stadium, Iranian Americans in Los Angeles are turning out for a rare shared moment—while clashes over visas, symbolism, and the war risk turning the match into a flashpoint.
For many Iranian Americans. the wait for Monday’s World Cup kickoff has felt like more than a sports calendar event. Iran’s team arrived in Tijuana last week wearing gold lapel pins on their jackets honoring the 168 victims—most of them schoolgirls—killed in a Feb. 28 U.S. missile strike on an elementary school in southern Iran at the outset of the war.
The game itself—again, just a game on paper—will land in a place loaded with meaning: Inglewood’s SoFi Stadium, in the Los Angeles area, which is home to the largest Iranian population outside Iran. Iran is scheduled to open play against New Zealand on Monday.
But while the match is in U.S. territory, the team is not allowed to stay there.
The 26 Iranian players were granted visas to play, but they will be forced to commute from Mexico. The team moved its training base from Tucson to Tijuana last month because of visa hurdles and other travel restrictions levied by the Trump administration. Several team officials had their visas denied at the last minute. and more than a dozen members of the Iranian delegation—mostly administrative. executive and technical staff—do not have permission to enter the United States.
In a statement to ESPN, the State Department said it issued “the necessary visas” and suggested the Iranian team could “abuse this system to sneak terrorists into the United States.”
The Iranian Football Federation, for its part, argues that the denial of visas to key staff constitutes political interference and violates the guarantees the United States made in 2018 to secure the rights to host the World Cup.
FIFA says it has no authority over a host country’s border enforcement and cannot override the United States. The broader history of FIFA’s decisions also sits uneasily in the background. When Indonesian government officials said they would prohibit Israeli players and officials from entering for the U20 World Cup in 2023. FIFA made accommodations for the tournament to be held in Argentina. where Israel finished third.
The United States. meanwhile. is the first host nation in World Cup history to be mired in a war with a tournament qualifier. In Southern California. where the Iranian community is already tense and racked by political division. the matchup is likely to intensify everything people are carrying into their living rooms.
Iran has played just once in the United States—in January 2000—when it battled the Americans to a 1-1 draw. Because the countries had no official diplomatic ties. it took months of negotiations to arrange that game. and the Iranians required special fingerprinting and security exemptions at the airport.
This time, the stakes for the diaspora aren’t just about whether Iran can win. Ranked 21st in the world. Iran has reached the last four of the last four tournaments and qualified for five of the last six. It has won only two games in those tournaments, and it has never advanced beyond the group stage. Four years ago, it came close when a 1-0 loss to the U.S. sent the team home.
Still, Monday offers a different kind of possibility, especially in a city where people already feel they are living with two timelines at once: World Cup games and a Middle East war that has altered everyday life.
If both the United States and Iran advance out of the first round and finish second in their groups, they could face off in a match in Dallas on July 3.
In Westwood, the World Cup is becoming visible in the neighborhood long before the whistle. Shaheen Ferdowsi. owner of West Hollywood’s Meymuni Cafe. has been preparing for a watch party Monday and installing what he described as a “humongous” flat-screen TV. Ferdowsi, 31, said it was fitting to gather the community during such a fraught time. “Meymuni” means “party” in Persian.
“As Iranians, we’ve just been through enough this year,” Ferdowsi said.
He expects the match to pull people toward one another, even as the war pushes them apart.
Some hardliners opposed to the Iranian government may protest the games, experts said. Others may avoid them altogether, seeing Iran’s national team as interchangeable with the government they fled. Still others hope it becomes a moment of unity and love for Los Angeles’ Iranian community.
Not every business is willing to take the risk. Ferdowsi said he rejected offers from some other operators in the area that declined to host a watch party. He said he avoids engaging in geopolitics and that the sport “transcends” division.
“There’s devastating and very complicated stuff happening, but from my very small operator mindset, the World Cup itself is very exciting and our people are coming here, the place where there are the most Iranians outside of Iran,” Ferdowsi said. “Getting behind a team can bring people together.”
For Iranian Americans, arguments may start before the first goal attempt. A vocal segment of the diaspora backed the campaign to install Reza Pahlavi. the exiled crown prince and son of the late shah. as Iran’s leader. That segment supported the assassination of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a U.S.-Israeli attack on the first day of the war. along with the ensuing conflict.
But even within that group, disillusionment has grown. A March poll commissioned by the National Iranian American Council showed that about two-thirds of Iranian Americans opposed the war.
Keven Harris, an assistant professor of sociology at UCLA who has studied the Iranian diaspora, said some monarchist supporters became disillusioned and demobilized when “regime change failed.” He said the cleavages might not be as hard and divisive as they were earlier.
Still. Harris said. those who see the team as a symbol of the Iranian government may feel that watching the game is taboo. FIFA’s plan to ban Iran’s pre-1979 revolution flag—featuring a lion and a rising sun associated with those who back Pahlavi and a return to monarchy—may also rouse protests. Harris said. He added he is skeptical there will be strong participation because the movement has been de-energized.
For Ashkan Karmi. a 35-year-old longtime Iranian soccer fan in Anaheim. the decision to attend Monday’s game was personal long before it was political. He said he always tries to support Iranian teams when they come to California. He attended all of Iran’s games in the Volleyball Nations League tournament in Anaheim in 2023 and paid $450 for his ticket to Monday’s match at SoFi Stadium.
Karmi said his friends couldn’t afford tickets, so he will attend alone. He plans to bring the lion and sun flag, even though he opposes the U.S.-Israel war. He expects it may be turned away.
Karmi asked to be identified by only his first and middle names for fear of backlash when attempting to visit Iran in the future. He said the game is a chance to “reconnect with this homeland and people.”
As a child there, he said he attended club soccer games, but he hasn’t been back in 18 years. Now, he said, he has family members “who cannot sleep well at night” amid U.S. strikes—yet he knows who will watch.
He also said he is looking forward to watching winger Mehdi Ghayedi, describing him as speedy and noting his technical prowess.
For Christina Lila Wilson, 39, the U.S. treatment of Iran’s team feels like a violation of something deeper than rules or politics.
Wilson, who spent her summers in West L.A. with Iranian relatives until she moved as a teenager, said the handling of the team is antithetical to her cultural values. She framed it as a question of hospitality: In her view, even hostility doesn’t justify humiliation.
“In Iran, hospitality is like an active duty and honor. Even if your biggest enemy is at your doorstep, you risk your life to protect them,” Wilson said. “So to not even allow [the players] to sleep after they play is very insulting and it does feel unjust. because the players are paying for so much beyond their control.”.
Wilson said her uncles. cousins and other relatives plan to gather at her parents’ home in Westwood to watch the game. She called her family a microcosm of the diaspora. with her mother. an Iranian Christian. and relatives across faith backgrounds including Baha’i. Zoroastrian. secular Muslim and Sufi expressions.
She expects arguments, as they have at past gatherings. Most recently. she said. a cousin who has the lion and sun flag prominently hanging in his home clashed with her uncle. who supports a blank tricolor flag without the emblem of the pre-revolutionary flag or the Islamic messaging of the current flag.
Wilson hopes Monday becomes a point of connection and that her community finds a different outlet for anger.
“We feel the need to humanize Iranians because Americans are used to seeing all those lands as numbers or rubble or desert. and that makes us numb to what happens there. ” Wilson said. “Civilians have paid the price with their lives, and that’s why we want to support. The team is a symbol of the resilience of the Iranian spirit.”.
Iran World Cup SoFi Stadium Inglewood New Zealand visas Iranian diaspora Los Angeles Meymuni Cafe Reza Pahlavi Ayatollah Ali Khamenei Westwood Tijuana