DUBAI, United Arab Emirates \u2014 Iran has decided to boycott the 2026 World Cup draw in Washington next week because the U.S. denied visas to members of its delegation, the state-run IRNA news agency reported on Friday.<\/p>\n
The agency quoted Iranian soccer federation spokesman Amir-Mahdi Alavi as saying that officials faced visa obstacles that go beyond sports considerations.<\/p>\n
There was no immediate comment from the White House.<\/p>\n
Alavi said the federation had reached out to FIFA and hoped it could help resolve the issue. Soccer’s ruling body didn\u2019t immediately reply to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump\u2019s administration announced in June a travel ban on citizens from 12 countries including Iran. The list also included Haiti, which last week qualified for the World Cup.<\/p>\n
Exemptions, however, were promised for \u201cany athlete or member of an athletic team, including coaches, persons performing a necessary support role, and immediate relatives, traveling for the World Cup, Olympics, or other major sporting event as determined by the secretary of state.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is unclear whether the exemptions also apply to the World Cup draw, which takes place on Dec. 5 at the Kennedy Center.<\/p>\n
The Iranian delegation would have been expected to be led by its soccer federation president Mehdi Taj, one of the most senior officials in Asian soccer and a member of two FIFA committees that have oversight of the World Cup.<\/p>\n
He is one of the vice presidents of the Asian Football Confederation and a member of FIFA panels with responsibility for the ruling body\u2019s competitions, plus men\u2019s national team soccer in general.<\/p>\n
A record 48 teams will participate in the June 11-July 19 World Cup co-hosted by the the U.S., Canada and Mexico.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DUBAI, United Arab Emirates \u2014 Iran has decided to boycott the 2026 World Cup draw in Washington next…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":312618,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-312617","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-soccer","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-soccer","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312617\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/312618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}