Avideh Motmaen-Far: FIFA sides with mullahs in Tehran over the people they oppress

Fans hold an Iranian flag as they gather at the Iranian national team's hotel to wish them luck in their first FIFA World Cup match against New Zealand, in Tijuana, Mexico, on Sunday. Photo by Francisco Vega/Getty Images

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Four years ago, I wrote an op-ed arguing that the World Cup should not be used as a veneer that lets the Islamic Republic of Iran pass itself off as a normal country. Today, as the 2026 World Cup gets underway throughout North America, FIFA has managed to do something I did not think possible: it has taken the side of the regime, over the very people it oppresses.

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FIFA has prohibited fans from displaying Iran’s Lion and Sun flag in World Cup stadiums, citing a stadium code of conduct that bars banners and symbols deemed to be “political.” At the same time, FIFA has described its talks with Iran’s football federation — an institution that does not operate independently of the state — as “excellent” and “constructive,” and has entertained the federation’s demand for “respect for the Iranian flag.” In other words, the symbol of the dictatorship is welcome; the symbol of the people is forbidden.

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Consider what FIFA is actually calling “political.” The Lion and Sun is not a partisan banner invented for a protest. The motif has roots in Persian heraldry stretching back centuries and became Iran’s national emblem in 1907. It flew over the country through changing governments until the newly installed Islamic Republic discarded it in 1980 and replaced it with its own ideological emblem, bordered by the slogan of the revolution repeated 22 times. To call the centuries-old symbol “political” while treating the regime’s ideological standard as neutral is not neutrality at all. It is an endorsement.

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This matters because football in Iran is not free. It sits heavily under the influence of a state apparatus dominated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) — a designated terrorist organization that was responsible for the downing of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 in 2020, which killed 176 people, including dozens of Canadians. The regime has spent years trying to turn its national team into a propaganda instrument, a smiling face to show the world while it jails, tortures and executes its critics at home. When FIFA bans the people’s flag, it hands Tehran the image it wants: a stadium where the only Iran on display is the official one.

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For the Iranian diaspora, the World Cup is one of the few global stages where we can be seen and heard without fear of the consequences that our families face inside Iran. The Lion and Sun has become the banner under which Iranians of every background — monarchist and republican, secular and faithful, young and old — gather to say that this regime does not speak for us. Over the past year, many of us have marched in cities around the world carrying that flag. To be told we may wave it in the streets but not in a stadium is to be told that our pride is acceptable, except where the cameras of the world are pointed.

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FIFA likes to insist that sport and politics do not mix. But there is nothing apolitical about silencing a people while accommodating their oppressor. A genuine commitment to keeping politics out of the stadium would mean treating a national heritage symbol as exactly that — heritage — rather than adopting the regime’s own definition of what counts as offensive. FIFA has not stayed out of Iran’s politics. It has quietly joined the wrong side.

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There is still time to correct this. FIFA should reverse the ban and make clear that fans may carry the Lion and Sun, a flag that belongs to the Iranian nation and not to any party or government. National federations whose teams face Iran should refuse to let the tournament become a laundering operation for a violent state. And the Canadian government should further crack down on the IRGC, so that the regime’s reach into sport, and into our communities, is treated with the seriousness it demands.