Why Iranian Americans are preparing to sit out the World Cup – POLITICO

“For decades, the Islamic Republic has used international sporting events to project legitimacy abroad while repressing athletes at home who dared to stand with the Iranian people,” said Pahlavi, calling on fans who attend the World Cup to “use this opportunity to stand in solidarity with the Iranian people.”

Iran’s first two matches — against New Zealand on June 15 and Belgium on June 21 — will be played at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, near Los Angeles. Its third group stage game will be played in Seattle against Egypt. That June 26 match also is the subject of a separate controversy: it will take place amid the city’s annual month-long LGBTQ+ Pride celebration, drawing formal complaints from both Middle Eastern countries.

In Los Angeles, state Sen. Ben Allen, whose district includes Westwood — an epicenter of the local Iranian community sometimes called “Tehrangeles” — said in a statement that the “gravity of the conflict” in Iran makes it difficult to treat the World Cup as the sort of “fun escape” it might typically be. “I hope the raw emotion this beautiful game evokes will give us the opportunity to humanize each other more than we usually do, and help us to remember that we have more in common than we sometimes believe,” he said.

There are ways Team Melli — the nickname for Iran’s national squad — might curry favor with Iranian Americans who oppose the Islamic Republic.

Florida state Rep. Anna Eskamani, the first Iranian American elected to the legislature in Florida, said that she expected “members of the diaspora to attend these games, but to carry with them some act of protest.” Eskamani, whose state is holding seven World Cup matches in Miami, said that if the team takes a stand — as members of the country’s women’s team recently did during a tournament in Australia, when some refused to sing the national anthem — it could give Iranian Americans a reason to offer support.

“I don’t see large-scale efforts … to platform individual players, unless they are standing up for the values that members of the diaspora care about,” she said.