Iran: Revolution, football and theocracy in one jersey

Football and politics have always been closely linked in Iran, regardless of who has ruled the country: the Shah, an American puppet, or the Ayatollahs, whose followers seized the US embassy in Tehran and held American diplomats hostage for 444 days.

Football first arrived in Iran nearly 130 years ago with the British, who controlled oil operations in the country’s south. In 1941, the Iranian national team played its first official match in a FIFA competition. Although wrestling remains Iran’s traditional national sport, football has become the country’s most popular game over the past seven decades, making it an increasingly sensitive political issue.

Even the names of Iran’s football clubs reflect that political history. The capital Tehran’s two biggest teams are good examples. Before the 1979 revolution, the Blues’ official name was Taj, meaning “crown,” and they were supported by the royal court. After the revolution, the club was renamed Esteghlal, meaning “independence.” Their rivals, the Reds, were known as Persepolis, a reference to the 2,500-year history of the Iranian monarchy. After the revolution, when symbols of the monarchy were banned, the team was renamed Pirouzi, meaning “victory.”

In recent years, however, the connection between football and politics has taken on a new dimension. During the 2026 World Cup, the war that the US and Israel launched against Iran had a major impact on both politics and football. This time, the issue extended beyond Iran’s borders. It was not only the Iranian people and politicians who became involved. Politicians in the US, Canada and Mexico also inflicted heavy pressure on Iran over visas, accommodation and training facilities for their national team.

Here are some of the most significant moments when football and politics collided in Iran.

In May 1968, Israel’s national football team travelled to Tehran to take part in the Asian Cup. But it was not a visiting team that many Iranians were eager to welcome. In the years before the 1979 revolution, Iran under the Shah was the only Middle Eastern country with formal relations with Israel. Those ties ran so deep that after the Shah returned to power following the 1953 American coup, Mossad worked with him to establish the feared Iranian security agency known as Savak.

At the same time, the Shah’s full support for Israel, combined with his harsh crackdown on dissent at home, fuelled anti-Israel sentiment across the country. Some university students and underground political groups opposed to the Shah even sent members to Lebanon for military training in camps run by the Palestinian Fatah movement.

Against this backdrop, the match between Iran and Israel carried enormous political significance. On the eve of the game, rumours spread that a wealthy Iranian Jewish merchant had purchased 10,000 tickets and planned to distribute them free of charge to football fans to support the Israeli team in the 40,000-seat stadium.

Iran eventually won the match, and what followed was a wave of anti-Israeli protests. According to newspaper reports at the time, crowds remained in the streets of central Tehran until after midnight. Faced with the size of the gatherings, the Shah’s police chose not to intervene.

After the 1979 revolution, the sports scene in Iran changed dramatically. Then, after the eight-year war launched by Iraq against Iran in 1980, not only the country’s economic and social conditions but sports also came under heavy pressure. As a result, the Iranian national team failed to qualify for the World Cup finals for 20 years. In 1997, Iran’s poor performance in the qualifying rounds meant that a place in the finals came down to a playoff against Australia, a strong team in international football.

Even the most optimistic fans in Iran saw little chance of victory, especially after the first leg in Tehran ended in a 1–1 draw. Before the return leg in Melbourne, Australian fans booed the Iranian national anthem. Soon after, the Australian team took a two-goal lead over Iran. But Iran managed to pull the game back to a draw, and during the match, the throwing of bottles and other objects at Iranian players on the pitch intensified. Eventually, Iran was qualified with a 2-2 draw.

But thousands of kilometres away from the stadium, another scene unfolded, which many witnessed in surprise. People who had lived under the pressure of an Islamic totalitarian government for two decades – and whose social freedoms, including dress, dancing, and public celebration, were restricted – danced and celebrated in the streets. It was the first time that the Islamic Republic’s police stood by and watched public joy instead of confronting dancing, which is forbidden in Islam.

After that moment, the Iranian national football team’s matches became more closely tied to national pride. In the years that followed, images of Iranian presidents wearing national team shirts and watching World Cup matches became a propaganda tool for the establishment.

Until 2022, Iran’s national football team and its presence at the World Cup were still seen as a source of national pride. But that year, this changed. The World Cup in Qatar took place just two months after the death of Mahsa Amini in Tehran’s Islamic Police detention centre.

Amini had been arrested because her hair covering was not approved by the Islamic Police. Her death sparked an unprecedented wave of anti-establishment protests across the country. Special police forces, Basij militias, and units of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) were deployed to suppress the demonstrations, killing at least 253 people.

This violent crackdown also affected the national football team. It not only stopped being a symbol of unity but also became a vehicle for expressing opposition to Iran’s rulers. None of the national team players sang the national anthem before their first match in Qatar, and in a poor performance, they suffered the heaviest defeat in Iran’s World Cup history, losing 6–2 to England.

Although the team was eliminated in the group stage, Iranian athletes’ refusal to sing the national anthem at international events became a recurring form of protest against domestic repression. At the same time, the public’s disconnect from the national team also showed itself in another way: celebrations of Iran’s defeats. During one such street celebration after Iran’s loss to the US at the Qatar World Cup, Mehran Samak was shot by the police commander of Bandar Anzali and killed inside his car while honking his horn in celebration.

In 2026, the political story of Iranian football began even before the players stepped onto the World Cup stage. Following the war launched against Iran by Israel and the US in February, it was not clear at first if the team would even be able to take part in the tournament. Soon after, pressure from Canada and the US intensified. Washington not only refused to grant visas to all team members but also barred them from staying in the country, where all their matches will be played. Iran’s first game in this World Cup is today (June 15) in Los Angeles, but the team members were forced to stay in Tijuana, Mexico, to train and sleep.

Moreover, following the violent suppression of another nationwide uprising in January, which took place in several cities across Iran and resulted in the deaths of more than 3,000 protesters, many Iranian immigrants in the US decided to use the tournament as a platform to express their opposition to Iran’s rulers.

The signs were already visible during Iran’s first match against New Zealand, which ended in a 2–2 draw. Once again, the national anthem was booed, but this time not by the opposing team’s supporters. It was booed by Iranians in the stadium. Outside the venue, some opponents of the establishment urged spectators not to support the Iranian team. Rather than calling it the national team, they referred to it as the “regime’s team” or the “IRGC team.”

These developments once again placed the Iranian national team at the centre of political tensions that extended far beyond football itself. The pressure on the team was so intense that at the press conference before Iran’s opening match on June 15, almost no football-related questions were asked. The issue had become so politically significant that the team’s captain, Mehdi Taremi, responded to the reporters by saying, “I wish you would also ask questions related to sports.”