{"id":532468,"date":"2026-03-12T23:40:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-12T23:40:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/532468\/"},"modified":"2026-03-12T23:40:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T23:40:08","slug":"donald-trump-says-iran-should-not-play-in-world-cup-for-their-life-and-safety-world-cup-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/532468\/","title":{"rendered":"Donald Trump says Iran should not play in World Cup for their \u2018life and safety\u2019 | World Cup 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Donald Trump said Thursday that Iran should not participate in the upcoming World Cup in North America, just days after telling Fifa\u2019s chief they would be welcome despite the Middle East war.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">\u201cThe Iran national soccer team is welcome to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/football\/world-cup-football\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" data-component=\"auto-linked-tag\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">World Cup<\/a>, but I really don\u2019t believe it is appropriate that they be there, for their own life and safety,\u201d the US president said on his Truth Social platform.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">The comments came two days after Fifa president <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/football\/gianni-infantino\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" data-component=\"auto-linked-tag\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Gianni Infantino<\/a> said he had received assurances from Trump that Iran would be welcome at the tournament, which the United States is co-hosting with Mexico and Canada.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">\u201cWe also spoke about the current situation in Iran, and the fact that the Iranian team has qualified to participate in the Fifa <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/football\/world-cup-2026\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">World Cup 2026<\/a>,\u201d Infantino wrote in a Tuesday post on Instagram. \u201cDuring the discussions, President Trump reiterated that the Iranian team is, of course, welcome to compete in the tournament in the United States.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">\u201cWe all need an event like the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/football\/fifa\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" data-component=\"auto-linked-tag\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Fifa<\/a> World Cup to bring people together now more than ever, and I sincerely thank the President of the United States for his support, as it shows once again that football unites the world.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">On Wednesday, Iranian sports minister Ahmad Donyamali <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/football\/2026\/mar\/11\/donald-trump-iran-welcome-2026-world-cup-gianni-infantino\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">said \u201cunder no circumstances can we participate\u201d<\/a> in the World Cup. Donyamali was the first government representative to speak on the World Cup since the US began bombing Iran with backing from Israel earlier this month. Iran and Fifa have yet to give an official update on the country\u2019s participation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Iran have been drawn in Group G with Belgium, Egypt and New Zealand in the tournament. Their three matches are scheduled to take place in the US, with two in \u200cLos Angeles and one in Seattle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Donald Trump said Thursday that Iran should not participate in the upcoming World Cup in North America, just&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":532469,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-532468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532468","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=532468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532468\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/532469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=532468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=532468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=532468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}