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The Iranian colours are illuminated on the screen during the World Cup 2026 Official Draw at John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC. Photo: Getty<\/p>\n
Iran\u2019s football chief has cast doubt over the national team\u2019s participation in this summer\u2019s World Cup following the US and Israeli attacks on the country.<\/p>\n
Iran have been drawn in Group G of the tournament and are scheduled to play three matches in the United States.<\/p>\n
According to multiple outlets, Iran football federation president Mehdi Taj told sports news portal Varzesh3: \u201cWhat is certain is that after these attacks, it\u2019s hard to look at the World Cup with hope.\u201d<\/p>\n
The World Cup takes place across the US, Canada and Mexico in June and July.<\/p>\n
Iran are due to face New Zealand and Belgium in Los Angeles on June 15 and 21 and Egypt in Seattle on June 26.<\/p>\n
Fifa secretary general Mattias Grafstrom told reporters on Saturday the situation was being followed closely.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cIt\u2019s too early to comment, but we will monitor developments around the world that could affect the tournament.\u201d<\/p>\n
Behind the scenes, senior figures at Fifa remain hopeful the escalating crisis will ease in time for Iran\u2019s team and supporters to travel safely to the US this summer. <\/p>\n
Mattias Grafstrom, the Fifa secretary general speaking at the International Football Association Board (Ifab) meeting in Wales, had said on Saturday \u201cwe will monitor developments\u201d.<\/p>\n
Iran had previously relented on a threat to boycott the World Cup draw as tensions previously intensified with the US.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had the finals draw in Washington DC, in which all teams participated, and our focus is on a safe World Cup with all the teams participating,\u201d Grafstrom said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will continue to communicate as we always do with the three [host] governments. Everybody will be safe.\u201d<\/p>\n
Additional reporting by The Daily Telegraph<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Iranian colours are illuminated on the screen during the World Cup 2026 Official Draw at John F…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":324315,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,898,112],"class_list":["post-324314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-latest-news-ticker","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324314\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/324315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}