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<\/a><\/p>\nPublished On 17 Mar 202617 Mar 2026<\/p>\n
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Iran\u2019s \u200cfootball federation is in discussions with FIFA \u2060about moving \u2060its World Cup 2026 matches from the United States to tournament co-host Mexico due to concerns \u2060about the safety of players, Iranian football president Mehdi Taj has said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen [US President Donald] Trump has \u2060explicitly stated that he cannot ensure the security of the Iranian national team, we will certainly not travel to \u2060America,\u201d Taj said on Monday in a post on the Iranian embassy in \u2060Mexico\u2019s X account.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWe are negotiating \u2060with FIFA to hold Iran\u2019s World Cup matches in Mexico.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Iranian sports \u2060minister said last week its players could not participate in football\u2019s global showpiece after the US and Israel \u200claunched air attacks on the country in late February, killing the supreme leader and several other political and military leaders.<\/p>\n
Trump has said the Iranian team is welcome to participate, but suggested it might not be appropriate for them to play in the country \u201cfor their own life and \u2060safety\u201d.<\/p>\n
Iran qualified for the 48-team tournament to be held \u200cin the US, Canada and Mexico from June 11 and are scheduled to play two \u200cgroup \u200cmatches in Los Angeles and one in Seattle.<\/p>\n
They were the first Asian nation to qualify for the World Cup, securing their spot on March 25, 2025.<\/p>\n
The US-Israel war on Iran started on February 28, 2026, and is now in its third week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The national football federation wants to relocate its group matches to Mexico due to the ongoing US-Israel war…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":528392,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,399,801,129,3,1079,21,19,22,20,25,231941,24,153412],"class_list":["post-528391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-football","tag-iran","tag-middle-east","tag-news","tag-sport","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-us-israel-war-on-iran","tag-usa","tag-world-cup-2026"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528391","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=528391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528391\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/528392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=528391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=528391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=528391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}