Iran’s expats see chance to confront regime — at – Latest News
On a heat Sunday morning in Inglewood, more than 200 Iranian-Americans gathered exterior SoFi Stadium with purple, white and inexperienced flags draped round their shoulders — the lion and the solar within the heart, the best way it was earlier than 1979.
They weren’t there to cheer. They have been there, one week earlier than kickoff, with the cameras already in entrance of the stadium, to show Americans who really represents Iran.
And to many right here, it isn’t the 11 gamers who will line up to signify the regime on June 15.
This is the struggle Southern California’s Iranian diaspora has been ready for. The World Cup has come to Los Angeles. That means the Islamic Republic has, as nicely.
On a heat Sunday morning in Inglewood, more than 200 Iranian-Americans gathered exterior SoFi Stadium with purple, white and inexperienced flags draped round their shoulders — the lion and the solar within the heart, the best way it was earlier than 1979. California Post
For the Iranian diaspora in Southern California — the biggest focus of Iranians wherever exterior Iran — the 2026 World Cup just isn’t a sporting occasion. It is an area for geopolitics. And after 47 years of watching the Islamic Republic declare the title, the flag, the staff and the worldwide microphone that belongs to a 2,500-year-old civilization, the neighborhood has determined to use that area.
The struggle began in May when FIFA quietly moved to prohibit followers from displaying Iran’s pre-revolutionary lion-and-sun flag in World Cup stadiums, renewing the controversy that shadowed the 2022 event in Qatar. The pretext is FIFA’s “no political symbols” rule.
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The actuality is that the Islamic Republic’s soccer federation pressured FIFA to ban the flag, realizing that it represents not solely pre-1979 Iran earlier than their reign, however is now synonymous with freedom and democracy, and the Iran of the longer term that Iranians have been preventing for.
For Iranians, the lion-and-sun just isn’t a fringe banner. It just isn’t, as FIFA’s legal professionals would have it, a “political” object on par with a marketing campaign slogan. It is one of the oldest national emblems on the planet, predating Islam by centuries. It is the one flag a technology of Iranian youngsters in Tehrangeles grew up seeing.
The struggle began in May when FIFA quietly moved to prohibit followers from displaying Iran’s pre-revolutionary lion-and-sun flag in World Cup stadiums, renewing the controversy that shadowed the 2022 event in Qatar. The pretext is FIFA’s “no political symbols” rule. CHRIS TORRES/EPA/Shutterstock
To rule it out of an American stadium whereas allowing the green-white-red banner of a regime that executes youngsters, beats ladies on the street and fires drones at the United States is a slap within the face to all Americans.
That is why a coalition of Iranian-American legal and civil teams has gone to court docket to problem the ban below the First Amendment, arguing that FIFA can’t import Tehran’s censorship into a nation whose Constitution exists exactly to stop that.
And it’s why, when Iran’s staff performs New Zealand at SoFi on June 15, then Belgium days later, Iranian-Americans from Encino to Irvine will probably be within the parking tons, on the sidewalks, and — flag ban or no flag ban — inside the stadium, sporting the lion and solar on T-shirts, scarves and the inside of their jackets.
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There is one thing becoming about this struggle taking place right here. Southern California is the place the regime’s exiles constructed a parallel Iran — the bookstores on Westwood Boulevard; the satellite tv for pc channels in Woodland Hills; the eating places on the Westside the place the menus are nonetheless in Persian and the music on the audio system continues to be pre-revolutionary. For many years, that Iran was a reminiscence for this neighborhood. The political headlines, the executions and the latest warfare, whereas on the minds and hearts of Iranian Americans, was nonetheless 1000’s of miles away.
The World Cup is bringing their struggle right here.
The regime understands the menace. That is why its soccer federation lobbied to keep the flag out of the stadiums. That is why its gamers have been instructed to fly out and in of the US on match day, a humiliation imposed by the State Department after this 12 months’s battle, which the regime is now utilizing to declare sufferer standing.
The World Cup is bringing their struggle right here. Ringo Chiu/SOPA Images/Shutterstock
And that’s the reason officers in Tehran have raged in opposition to the diaspora’s “infiltration” of the event, as if attending a soccer match in your own nation have been a covert operation.
It just isn’t. It is citizenship — American citizenship — getting used the best way it was meant to be used.
Iranian-Americans in California fled a regime that criminalized their id. They got here to a nation the place waving a flag the Ayatollah hates is a constitutional proper.
When the cameras pan the gang at SoFi on June 15, the world will see the nation Iranians really need — secular, pluralist, historic, free — and never the regime that has held it hostage for 47 years.
Football belongs to the followers. Iran belongs to the Iranians. And for one summer season, in stadiums from Inglewood to Seattle, Southern California’s diaspora intends to remind FIFA, the mullahs and the remaining of America that the regime just isn’t Iran.
Lisa Daftari is a overseas coverage analyst and media commentator based mostly in Los Angeles.
