L.A. Iranians see hope, unity in SoFi Stadium World Cup match

Iran’s World Cup team arrived in Tijuana last week bearing 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 World Cup kicked off last week as that war in the Middle East continues, with Iran set to open play against New Zealand on Monday at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood. It’s significant that the game will take place in the Los Angeles area, home to the largest Iranian population outside Iran.

While Iran will play in the U.S., its players won’t be allowed to stay here. 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.

All of the 26 Iranian players were granted visas to play, but they will be forced to commute from Mexico. 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 U.S.

The State Department said in a statement to ESPN that 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 argues that the denial of visas to key staff constitutes political interference and violates the guarantees the U.S. made in 2018 to secure the rights to host the World Cup.

FIFA, for its part, says it has no authority over a host country’s border enforcement and cannot override the U.S. But 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 is the first host nation in World Cup history to be at war with a tournament qualifier. As a result, the mood in the Iranian community in Southern California, already tense and racked by political division, could become further charged.

Iran has played just once in the U.S., 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.

Iran could experience more success Monday. Ranked 21st in the world, it is no stranger to the World Cup. It qualified for the last four tournaments and five of the last six, though it won just two games in those tournaments. And while it never has made it out of the group stage, it came close four years ago when a 1-0 loss to the U.S. sent the team home.

This year, if both the U.S. 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 recent days, Shaheen Ferdowsi, owner of West Hollywood’s Meymuni Cafe, has been busy preparing for a watch party the shop will host for Monday’s match and installing what he described as a “humongous” flat-screen TV.

Ferdowsi, 31, said it was fitting for a cafe that serves modern Persian cuisine to gather the community during such a fraught time. After all, he notes, Meymuni in Persian means “party.”

“As Iranians, we’ve just been through enough this year,” Ferdowsi said.

Iran’s Alireza Jahanbakhsh arrives with his teammates in Tijuana for the World Cup.

(Gregory Bull / Associated Press)

With two of the Iranian team’s three group-play games at SoFi, some who are steadfastly opposed to the Iranian government may protest them, experts said. Others may avoid the game altogether, seeing the team as interchangeable with the government they fled from. Still others hope it will be a moment of unity and love for L.A.’s Iranian community.

Some other operators in the area rejected the idea of hosting a watch party, Ferdowsi said. He said he avoids engaging in geopolitics. He said 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.”

As Iranian American households contend with the potential of the two countries at war hashing it out on the field, they also are bracing for arguments gathered around their screens.

A vocal segment of the diaspora backed the campaign to install Reza Pahlavi, the exiled former 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, as well as the ensuing conflict.

Of that group, however, some have become wary of the killing of civilians and of President Trump’s violent rhetoric. A March poll commissioned by the National Iranian American Council showed that about two-thirds of Iranian Americans opposed the war.

Kevan Harris, an assistant professor of sociology at UCLA who has studied the Iranian diaspora, said some of the ardently monarchist Iranians became disillusioned and demobilized when the war’s initial objective of regime change failed.

“The cleavages [in the Iranian community] might not be as hard and divisive as they were earlier,” Harris said.

Still, he said, those who see the team as a symbol of the Iranian government may feel watching the game is taboo. FIFA’s plan to ban Iran’s pre-1979 revolution flag, emblazoned with a lion and a rising sun associated with those who back Pahlavi and a return to monarchy, may rouse some protests, Harris said, but he is skeptical there will be a strong showing, with the movement de-energized.

A passerby is reflected in the Gallery Eshgh store window, which has a poster supporting Reza Pahlavi, the exiled crown prince and son of the late shah, along Westwood Boulevard.

(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)

Ashkan Karmi, 35, an Anaheim resident and longtime fan of Iranian soccer, said he always makes a point of supporting Iran teams when they come to California. He attended all the Iran team‘s games in the Volleyball Nations League tournament in Anaheim in 2023 and paid $450 for his ticket to Monday’s game at SoFi Stadium.

The tickets were too pricey for his friends, but he shelled out and will attend alone. He plans to bring the lion and sun flag, although he opposes the U.S.-Israel war, to show he also opposes the Iranian government, but expects it to be turned away.

Karmi, who asked to be identified by only his first and middle names for fear of facing backlash when attempting to visit Iran in the future, said the game is a chance to “reconnect with this homeland and people.”

As a child there, he attended the club soccer games, but he hasn’t been back in 18 years. Now he has family members “who cannot sleep well at night” amid U.S. and Israeli strikes, but he knows who will watch the game.

He looks forward to watching winger Mehdi Ghayedi, who is speedy and shows great technical prowess, he said.

For Christina Lila Wilson, 39, who spent her summers in West L.A. with Iranian relatives until she moved as a teenager, the U.S. treatment of the team is antithetical to her cultural values. It represents a rare point of agreement in her family, which has been bitterly divided in opinion over U.S. intervention in Iran.

“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’s uncles, cousins and other relatives plan to gather at her parents’ home in Westwood to watch the game. Her family is a microcosm of the diaspora, she said, with her mother, an Iranian Christian, and other relatives of various faith backgrounds, including Baha’i, Zoroastrian, secular Muslim and Sufi expressions.

She expects arguments to break out, as they have at past gatherings. Most recently, 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.

She hopes the game will serve as a point of connection and that her community will find a different outlet for its 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.”