Published June 7, 2026
Iran’s World Cup squad has arrived in Tijuana, Mexico ahead of the World Cup. Amid a diplomatic spat with co-host the United States, which is at war with Tehran and has denied visas to several members of the Iranian delegation.
The team landed in the Mexican city just after 5 a.m. (12 p.m. Japan time) across the border from San Diego, California, after an overnight flight from Turkiye, where they had been training for the past three weeks.
The Iranian Football Federation negotiated a last-minute move to move the team’s base camp from Arizona to Mexico, in part due to uncertainty over whether visas to enter the United States would be granted.
The federation said the United States issued visas to all players on Friday, just 10 days before the first game, but several members of the support team, including “key managers and management members,” were not issued visas.
The controversy comes just days before the tournament opens on Thursday, when Mexico faces South Africa in Mexico City.
Iran will be based in the city for the duration of the tournament, despite playing the entire group stage on the US West Coast.
If they play in the United States, it will be the first World Cup in which the host nation hosts a team from a country at war.
“Pursue the responsibility of the United States”
The Iranian team spent nearly three weeks at a training camp in Antalya and used their time in Turkiye to apply for visas for the three host countries.
Tolkien’s special envoy in Washington, Tom Ballack, told X late Friday that the players received their U.S. visas the night before they departed for Mexico.
However, the Iranian embassy in Turkiye announced that 15 administrative and administrative staff were denied visas.
“You have escalated the intentional and discriminatory treatment of the Iranian national soccer team to the highest level,” the embassy wrote on X on Saturday, calling on world soccer governing body FIFA to “hold the United States accountable for its violations of rules.”
Adding to the tension, Iran’s ambassador to Mexico said on Saturday that the team had been informed that based on visa conditions, they would have to enter and leave the United States on the day of the game.
“You can enter the country in the morning, but you have to leave the same day,” Iranian special envoy Abolfazl Pasandide told reporters.
This appears to contradict what team spokesperson Amir Mahdi Alavi said earlier on state television.
“The visas issued to the national team are multi-entry visas, with the national team arriving at the match venue a day before the first match and two days before each match for the next match,” Alavi said.
FIFA rules for the World Cup stipulate that team managers must hold a press conference at the match venue the night before the match.
“Political interference”
The Iranian Football Federation, whose president Mehdi Taj was reportedly among those denied visas, described the decision as “the worst form of political interference in sport”.
In response, a US government official confirmed that “the necessary visas for Iran to participate in the World Cup, including for players and necessary support staff, have been issued.”
“We will not allow the Iranian team to abuse this system to smuggle terrorists into the United States under false pretenses,” the official said, without directly addressing the issue of people whose visas have been denied.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in April that any problem was not with the Iranian players, but with “other players[they]want to bring in,” suggesting some of them have ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is on the US blacklist of “terrorist” groups.
Iran is in Group G and will play New Zealand and Belgium in Los Angeles on June 15th and 21st, and Egypt in Seattle on June 26th.
