{"id":322220,"date":"2025-11-30T11:07:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-30T11:07:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/322220\/"},"modified":"2025-11-30T11:07:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-30T11:07:07","slug":"iran-to-boycott-2026-world-cup-draw-in-united-states-because-of-visa-issue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/322220\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran to boycott 2026 World Cup draw in United States because of visa issue"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Iran say they plan to boycott the 2026 World Cup draw in the United States next week because of the limited number of visas for their delegation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">According to the Tehran Times, the US has issued four visas to Iran&#8217;s delegation, but they do not include one for Mehdi Taj, the president of the country&#8217;s football federation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Taj said he had spoken to Fifa president Gianni Infantino about the issue.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We are evaluating our options, which will depend on timing and circumstances,&#8221; Taj said in an interview with Iranian television on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We remain in close communication with the Iranian foreign ministry and other authorities, and we will take the necessary decision at the appropriate time.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;The current position of the Iran Football Federation executive committee is that no one will attend the event unless all visas are issued.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The draw is scheduled to take place in Washington DC on Friday, 5 December at 17:00 GMT (12:00 local time).<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">BBC Sport has contacted Fifa for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Iran say they plan to boycott the 2026 World Cup draw in the United States next week because&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":322221,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-322220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=322220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322220\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/322221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=322220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=322220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}