FIFA Shuttle Diplomacy

FIFA President Gianni Infantino may be the only person left on earth who thinks he can reconcile the competing interests of Tehran and Washington.

As American and Iranian leaders abandoned failed peace negotiations in Islamabad, Infantino is already weeks into his own shuttle diplomacy between the two warring nations. The head of soccer’s governing body is attempting to navigate between a country that doesn’t want to play on United States soil and a co-host that says he “doesn’t care” if the team does.

Iran was among the first nations to win a spot in the tournament to be held across North America but since President Donald Trump began waging war against the country one month ago, its leaders are openly questioning whether their national team will participate. The country’s sports minister has demanded matches scheduled for Los Angeles and Seattle be relocated to sites in Mexico, a request that FIFA denied.

“Gianni’s going to have to do two things,” said a North American soccer official granted anonymity to discuss sensitive matters within FIFA. “One: Convince Trump that it’s fine for Iran to play. And two: Convince Iran to be comfortable playing in the United States. The other options create a lot of dominos that would fall afterwards.”

The standoff represents the biggest geopolitical challenge yet for Infantino, who has worked industriously to cultivate a close relationship with U.S. leadership at the potential expense of his support from FIFA’s 210 other member nations. Some within FIFA, including Secretary General Mattias Grafström, already found Infantino’s strategy to personally woo Trump excessive, according to two people familiar with the dynamics at the highest levels of the soccer governing body.

“FIFA has consistently stated that it is looking forward to all teams participating at the FIFA World Cup 2026 to compete in a spirit of fair play and respect. There is no change to the match schedule,” FIFA said in a statement attributed to a spokesperson. “The FIFA President and FIFA Secretary General are fully aligned on relations with the governments of Canada, Mexico and the United States. Any suggestion to the contrary is simply false.”

Now Infantino’s hard-earned ties to Trump are clashing with some of his organization’s core principles. Seeing a team that qualified on sporting merit not play in the tournament because of political tensions would be a severe blow to FIFA’s credibility — and to its leader personally.

“There are several football associations that I’m sure are putting pressure on him to make sure that Iran participates. FIFA has important relationships with countries like Russia and China that are also powerful and important for Gianni Infantino to keep a good relation with,” said Miguel Maduro, a former Portuguese government minister who chaired FIFA’s Governance Committee. “So that explains why he’s trying desperately to find a way to guarantee that Iran will participate.”

Iran claimed its World Cup spot in March 2025 by finishing first in its Asian qualifying group. The fans of “Team Melli,” one of Asia’s most accomplished soccer nations, began preparing to cheer on their team in the five-week tournament whose matches will be spread across the U.S., Mexico and Canada.

But Trump’s political agenda interfered. In June, Iran was among 12 countries covered under Trump’s most expansive ban on foreign visitors, which — while explicitly exempting players and team staff — would likely prohibit all spectators traveling from Iran. (The full travel ban was later expanded to 19 countries, including World Cup competitor Haiti.)

When Iranian sports officials prepared to go to Washington for the tournament’s lottery draw in December, the State Department did not approve all of the delegation’s visa requests.

After Iran responded by threatening to skip the ceremonial event altogether, FIFA stepped in to mediate between the White House, State Department and the Football Federation Islamic Republic of Iran, a FIFA member. A small Iranian delegation, including the head coach, Ardeshir Amir Ghalenoei, ultimately attended the event at the Kennedy Center, where Infantino presented Trump with a novel “FIFA Peace Prize.”

As tensions rose between Washington and Tehran, FIFA maintained contact with both countries and their soccer federations while largely avoiding public discussion of the changing dynamics. The Trump administration emphasized that security concerns would drive the administration’s decisions about what kinds of exceptions it would make to the travel ban, including for government representatives and others in an official delegation.

“We want this to be a safe and secure World Cup,” White House FIFA Task Force executive director Andrew Giuliani said in a January interview. “So yeah, of course, we want the teams to be here and to play…but it’d be foolish, in understanding what Iran is going through right now, to expect that we would just open our borders.”

On February 28, the United States began attacking military, governmental and civilian sites across Iran in coordination with Israel. Iran responded with its own strikes on regional neighbors, several of which are also participating in the World Cup: Iran, Jordan, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

Giuliani publicly celebrated the airstrikes, which killed numerous Iranian officials including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on social media.

“My heart is with the thousands of American service members’ families who were victims of the Ayatollah’s ‘Death to America’ mission. The head of the snake spreading that vile message has now been cut off, and I pray the Iranian people will seize their liberty,” he wrote. “We’ll deal with soccer games tomorrow — tonight, we celebrate their opportunity for freedom.”

Days later, Trump was asked by POLITICO in an interview whether he wanted Iran to send a team to the United States for the World Cup.“I really don’t care” whether Iran competes, Trump responded.

The remark reverberated across the global soccer community, given the expectation that the host nation should be committed to welcoming all qualified teams.

Infantino rushed to the White House to clarify the administration’s position. He and Trump spoke about the fact that Iran had qualified to participate in the tournament, and that FIFA expected to proceed as planned. Infantino struck an optimistic tone afterward, posting on Instagram late that night that Trump had reaffirmed Iran would be welcome. But by the next morning, Trump had reversed course once more.

“The Iran National Soccer Team is welcome to the World Cup,” he wrote on Truth Social, “but I really don’t believe it is appropriate that they be there, for their own life and safety.”

Trump’s comments came as he was pushing the Australian government, including in a conversation with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, to facilitate asylum claims by Iranian players who had been labeled “traitors” by Iranian state media for refusing to sign the national anthem before a Women’s Asian Cup match in Queensland. Most did not ultimately accept the offer to remain in Australia.

Trump’s “for their own life and safety” comments stunned FIFA officials, raising questions about Iran’s participation in the tournament. The president of the country’s football federation said Tehran would “boycott the United States, but not the World Cup,” according to remarks reported by the state-affiliated Fars news agency.

Sports minister Ahmad Donyamali warned that Iran would participate in the World Cup only if FIFA agreed to relocate the country’s matches out of the United States. His deputy, Alireza Rahimi, instructed Iranian athletes and artists to form a human chain around critical infrastructure to protect the facilities from U.S and Israeli attacks.

Iran’s Football Federation Vice President Mehdi Mohammad Nabi, second left, Iran’s coach Amir Ghalenoei, third left, and team members hold pictures of children allegedly killed in U.S. and Israeli airstrikes strikes in Iran, before the friendly match against Costa Rica in Turkey. | Riza Ozel/AP

Iranian players, coaches and support staff are scheduled to arrive at the Westward Look Wyndham Grand Resort Spa in Arizona’s Sonoran Desert foothills by June 10 for training at the Kino Sports Complex in Tucson. The team will travel from there over the following two weeks to Los Angeles, home to the world’s largest Persian diasporic community, for matches against New Zealand and Belgium, and to Seattle, where they will face Egypt.

Donyamali has proposed that FIFA relocate the country’s matches to Mexico, an unprecedented disruption in a tournament calendar that has been set since December. Mexican government officials have expressed their openness to such a solution.

“Yes, Mexico maintains diplomatic relations with every country in the world,” Sheinbaum said at a March 17 press conference. “We will wait to see what FIFA decides.”Publicly, FIFA has maintained that it expects all qualified teams to participate as planned. Privately, however, Infantino and FIFA officials have been scrambling to contain the fallout.

Infantino traveled to Turkey on March 31 to meet directly with Iran’s national team ahead of a friendly match against Costa Rica in the coastal town of Antalya. To be there, Infantino missed the day’s most dramatic match: a European playoff in which former World Cup champion Italy failed to qualify for this year’s tournament by losing to the 66th-ranked Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Over fruit and cookies, Infantino spoke to Ghalenoei — along with senior officials from the country’s national soccer federation, including vice president Mehdi Mohammad Nabi — in an effort to show his support.

“Iran will be at the World Cup,” Infantino said at halftime of the friendly match in Antalya. “That’s why we’re here.”

But as the war continued to escalate, Donyamali reiterated his country’s request to move venues, arguing on April 5 that “the security of any national team participating in the World Cup abroad should be guaranteed by FIFA,” according to Turkish outlet Anatolu. Two days later, Trump threatened the death of “an entire civilization” hours before his Tuesday deadline for Iran to strike a deal with the U.S.

After previously expressing her openness to hosting Iran’s matches in one of the three Mexican cities that will host World Cup matches, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Friday that FIFA has decided against relocating them from the United States.

The logistics of a move to Mexico would be complicated. The most straightforward route, according to a soccer official like others permitted to candidly discuss tournament mechanics without being named, would be to ask South Korea — the only country with all three of its group-stage matches in Mexico — to effectively swap its schedule with Iran’s. But South Korea has also begun preparing to host its base camp in Guadalajara, and might be wary to start anew at a different location.

Even if such a move did work, it would offer only a temporary reprieve. If Iran graduates out of the first round to the knockout phase, the team will have to play its subsequent matches all in the United States.

That could produce the most politically fraught match yet on Infantino’s watch. Were Iran and the United States to both finish second in their first-round groups — a plausible scenario based on each team’s quality and current performance — the hostile nations would face off on a field in Dallas on July 3.

“Trump will want that event to be a success, too,” said Maduro, the former FIFA governance-committee chair. “Because the success of Infantino on the World Cup in the U.S. is the success of Trump.”

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