Iran was the first team to qualify for the 2026 World Cup. But when FIFA convened a planning meeting for participating nations this week in Atlanta, Iran was the one country missing.
That absence has fueled questions about whether Tehran will send a team to the United States for this summer’s tournament amid a potentially escalating regional war, and whether the U.S. government would allow Iranian officials to enter the country if it does.
“I really don’t care,” if Iran participates, President Donald Trump told POLITICO in an exclusive interview on Tuesday morning. “I think Iran is a very badly defeated country. They’re running on fumes.”
Soccer governing body FIFA, which declined to comment, has long tried to keep geopolitics from overshadowing the World Cup, which will be spread across North America’s three largest countries. But with a war underway in which one tournament host has attacked a participant, which in turn launched strikes on other competing nations, the prospect of Iranian players — and potentially government-linked officials — traveling to the U.S. is fast becoming one of the sports world’s most sensitive flash points.
Iran is currently scheduled to play New Zealand in Los Angeles on June 15, Belgium in Los Angeles on June 21 and Egypt in Seattle on June 26. If both the U.S. and Iran finish second in their respective groups, the two countries could face off in a July 3 elimination match in Dallas.
After U.S. and Israeli airstrikes inside Iran plunged the region into open conflict, Iran’s top soccer official said his country might not send a team to the tournament.
“What is certain is that after this attack, we cannot be expected to look forward to the World Cup with hope,” Iranian soccer federation President Mehdi Taj told the Iranian sports outlet Varzesh3 following the strikes.
Even before the military conflict began, questions about whether Iranian fans and dignitaries would be allowed to attend swirled around tournament preparations. Iran is one of two competing nations covered under Trump’s most restrictive travel ban, which was enacted by executive order last June.
The ban specifically carves out World Cup teams and support personnel from the ban, but leaves decisions about whether to grant or deny visa exceptions to others — including government figures or executives from team-sponsoring companies — for the State Department to consider on a case-by-case basis.
In December, the State Department did not approve all visa applications for Iranian representatives planning to attend the World Cup draw in Washington. Iran subsequently threatened to boycott the ceremony, prompting FIFA to step in and mediate the dispute, according to people familiar with the episode.
The three-day event hosted by FIFA in Atlanta this week included a series of meetings and workshops for national federations that will compete in the tournament. Individual sessions covered issues related to team medicine, facilities, match organization and commercial matters, according to a copy of the agenda obtained by POLITICO.
Representatives from soccer federations worldwide from all over the world participated in the planning workshops but Iran was absent, according to two people familiar with the gathering granted anonymity to discuss it. The White House FIFA World Cup Task Force, which coordinates closely with Cabinet agencies on tournament planning, for months has been closely tracking the geopolitical complexities that are likely to impact the tournament.
The task force’s director, Andrew Giuliani, said in a January interview in Colorado Springs that security concerns would drive the administration’s decisions about what kinds of exceptions it would make to the travel ban.
“We want this to be a safe and secure World Cup,” Giuliani said. “So yeah, of course, we want the teams to be here and to play, but we also understand that most fan bases are going to come here to enjoy an incredible World Cup, to add to the experience. But it’d be foolish, in understanding what Iran is going through right now, to expect that we would just open our borders.”
Giuliani told POLITICO on Tuesday that “President Trump’s decisive action to eliminate the Ayatollah, the most notorious state sponsor of terrorism in my lifetime, removes a major destabilizing threat and will help protect people around the world, including Americans and the millions planning to attend the 2026 World Cup in the United States.”
