Iran v Iran: Dissidents Flood LA Match With Protest
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- Iran drew 2-2 with New Zealand at Los Angeles Stadium in a match where hundreds of dissidents waved pre-revolutionary Lion and Sun flags, chanted "Mullahs' team is not my team" and "Regime change in Iran," and sang Iran's pre-revolutionary national anthem outside.
- FIFA had banned the Lion and Sun emblem inside stadiums as a political symbol, but it appeared on t-shirts and flags throughout the crowd, drawing a few hundred protesters angry at both the ban and at what they see as a national team representing the Islamic Republic rather than the Iranian people.
- Striker Mehdi Taremi rejected the dissident characterization, telling media before the match that the team plays for all Iranians at home and abroad and does not get involved in politics.
- Iran was forced to move its World Cup base camp from Arizona to Tijuana, Mexico, because of visa problems, meaning players competed in the United States while staying across the border.
- The match came against the backdrop of a deal to halt US-Iran hostilities, which some protesters rejected: "We don't want a deal... The people of Iran deserve regime change," one demonstrator told reporters.
- Some anti-regime spectators openly celebrated when New Zealand took the lead, while inside the stadium, Iranian-American fans like Elika said she "tries to separate the regime from the team," honoring a tradition of watching Iran with her late father.
Why it matters: The match laid bare a deep schism in the Iranian-American community: roughly half the crowd backed the players while the other half used the game as a protest platform, with chants of regime change and opposition to a recent US-Iran deal audible throughout. For FIFA, the scene underscores its inability to enforce its own ban on political symbols at the tournament. The team's relocation to Tijuana also reveals the practical limits of Iran's participation in a World Cup hosted by a country its government remains at odds with.
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