Source: Politics
SEATTLE — Iran faces off against Egypt tonight in a match that will have wide-ranging implications for the nation and its U.S. hosts, just hours after the American military conducted a strike in response to an Iranian attack on a commercial ship passing through the Strait of Hormuz.
As the Washington-Tehran ceasefire frays, a draw tonight in Seattle would help set up a situation where Iran plays its potential next two games at a Canadian stadium, rather than again in the United States, a scenario that would offer the Trump administration a two-week reprieve from the complicated task of trying to host a tournament while imposing unique travel restrictions on just one of the 48 competitors.
The Iranian Football Federation decided to move its base camp from Arizona to Tijuana, Mexico, amid concerns that the U.S. could not ensure its security. The State Department did not extend visas to Iran’s full delegation, including government officials and support staff, and limited the team’s players and coach to arrival within 24 hours of kickoff. The Department of Homeland Security relaxed those rules this week, allowing Iran’s team to spend two nights in Seattle before today’s match, although several players complained they were held for extended questioning upon arrival.
“Undoubtedly, the fact that the management and administrative staff could not accompany the team has negatively affected the players’ peace of mind and further complicated the national team’s work,” Abolfazl Pasandideh, Iran’s ambassador to Mexico, told POLITICO. “Despite these difficulties, the Iranian team has repeatedly demonstrated its ability to stay focused and perform at the highest level, even under adverse circumstances. The professionalism shown by the players and coaching staff in the face of these challenges has been paramount, and the results achieved clearly reflect that reality.”
“Any measure that facilitates athletes’ participation and competition on equal terms is a positive step,” Pasandideh said of the Trump administration’s relaxed travel rules for the Iran team.
Nonetheless the World Cup’s one cross-border commuter squad sits on the precipice of advancing to the knockout rounds depending on tonight’s results and an impenetrably complicated formula that FIFA tournament organizers are using for the first time.
“The White House FIFA Task Force has prepared for and is aware of all potential scenarios involving 32 teams that will move into the knockout rounds and will advance from there,” said White House spokesperson Davis Ingle.
There are, according to The Athletic’s invaluable World Cup tracker, 625 plausible scoring combinations between the two final Group G matches that will take place concurrently tonight — Iran’s encounter with Egypt, and Belgium’s against New Zealand in Vancouver.
In 21 percent of those situations, according to The Athletic, an Iranian draw against Egypt would set the team on a path to play its next two matches in Vancouver: on July 2 against Switzerland, and then potentially again there five days later.
That would shift responsibility for managing Iran’s travel arrangements from the U.S. to Canada, whose Prime Minister Mark Carney said yesterday that he would like to restore diplomatic relations with Iran after fourteen years of suspension. (Ironically, it is Switzerland that has served as a “protecting power” for Iranian interests with both the U.S. and Canada in the absence of direct connections between those governments.
In other scenarios, including any that involve an Iranian win tonight, the country would play its subsequent matches in Dallas or Seattle. The last path, which The Athletic estimates as a 18 percent probability, would set up the most geopolitically fraught face-off of all: a U.S.-Iran match on July 6.
“We have reiterated on numerous occasions that we have no issue with the American people,” Pasandideh said. “Our disagreement lies with the hostile policies that the United States government has implemented against the Iranian people.”
If the Trump administration kept its current travel rules in place, that would mean Iran’s team would touch down on American soil on the 250th anniversary of the United States — a fitting culmination for the first World Cup to begin with a host country at war with a competitor.