{"id":199664,"date":"2026-03-01T20:23:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-01T20:23:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/199664\/"},"modified":"2026-03-01T20:23:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-01T20:23:07","slug":"iran-could-miss-2026-world-cup-in-u-s-after-surprise-attacks-nbc-los-angeles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/199664\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran could miss 2026 World Cup in U.S. after surprise attacks \u2013 NBC Los Angeles"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The president of Iran\u2019s soccer federation says he does not know if the national team can play <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbclosangeles.com\/tag\/2026-world-cup\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">World Cup<\/a> matches in the United States following the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbclosangeles.com\/news\/national-international\/what-to-know-us-israel-attacks-iran\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">surprise U.S. and Israeli bombardment<\/a> of his country.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat is certain is that after this attack, we cannot be expected to look forward to the World Cup with hope,\u201d Mehdi Taj told sports portal Varzesh3 as Iran traded strikes with Israel as part of a widening war <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbclosangeles.com\/news\/national-international\/israel-israel-attacks-iran-state-of-emergency\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">prompted by the bombardment<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbclosangeles.com\/news\/national-international\/world-leaders-react-to-us-israeli-strikes-death-of-iran-leader\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran<\/a> continued for a second day on Sunday after the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbclosangeles.com\/news\/national-international\/who-is-ayatollah-ali-khamenei-what-to-know-about-iran-supreme-leader\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei<\/a> threw the future of the Islamic Republic into uncertainty and raised the risk of regional instability.<\/p>\n<p>Iran has been drawn in Group G at the World Cup and is scheduled to play in Los Angeles \u2013 where it faces New Zealand and Belgium on June 15 and 21, respectively \u2013 before it plays Egypt in Seattle on June 26.<\/p>\n<p>The United States is hosting the tournament with Canada and Mexico from June 11-July 19.<\/p>\n<p>Fans from Iran were already <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbclosangeles.com\/news\/national-international\/stranded-travelers-new-connections-war-middle-east-air-travel\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">banned from entering<\/a> the U.S. in the first iteration of the travel ban announced by the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbclosangeles.com\/tag\/trump-administration\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Trump administration<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>FIFA did not immediately reply to an email from The Associated Press over the current situation regarding Iran\u2019s participation in the World Cup.<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tThe second-place team will receive $33 million and the third and fourth place teams will earn $29M and $27M respectively.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The president of Iran\u2019s soccer federation says he does not know if the national team can play World&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":199665,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[15392,19378,48,52,51,47,50,49],"class_list":{"0":"post-199664","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-2026-world-cup","9":"tag-iran","10":"tag-la","11":"tag-la-headlines","12":"tag-la-news","13":"tag-los-angeles","14":"tag-los-angeles-headlines","15":"tag-los-angeles-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199664"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199664\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}