{"id":369061,"date":"2026-03-28T02:15:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-28T02:15:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/369061\/"},"modified":"2026-03-28T02:15:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-28T02:15:10","slug":"iran-wear-black-armbands-and-hold-schoolbags-during-national-anthem-before-match","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/369061\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran wear black armbands and hold schoolbags during national anthem before match"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Iran\u2019s players wore black armbands and held schoolbags during their national anthem before a friendly against Nigeria on Friday.<\/p>\n<p>The protest gesture followed a strike on an Iranian school that killed at least 168 people, mostly children, at the start of the war in the Middle East.<\/p>\n<p>Reports have suggested United States forces may have been responsible, but there has been no formal acceptance of this and an investigation is ongoing.<\/p>\n<p>Iran have qualified for this summer\u2019s World Cup and are due to play their three group matches in the US, but their participation is uncertain amid the continuing conflict.<\/p>\n<p>The nation were in action on Friday in Antalya, Turkey, where they were beaten 2-1 by Nigeria.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Iran\u2019s players wore black armbands and held schoolbags during their national anthem before a friendly against Nigeria on&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":369062,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-369061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369061","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=369061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369061\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/369062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}