Iran FA Chief Demands FIFA Guarantees Over IRGC Treatment Before World Cup Trip

T he president of Iran's football federation, Mehdi Taj, has said FIFA must formally guarantee that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps will not be insulted by United States authorities before the Iran national team travels to the 2026 World Cup, according to comments aired by state broadcaster IRIB and reported by Reuters on Tuesday.

The intervention follows an incident at the Canadian border last week, when Taj and a delegation from the Football Federation of the Islamic Republic of Iran (FFIRI) turned back en route to the FIFA Congress in Vancouver. Canada's immigration minister later confirmed in parliament that Taj's visa had been cancelled while he was in the air because of his links to the IRGC, which Canada designated a 'terrorist entity' in 2024, five years after the U.S. took the same step.

FIFA Secretary-General Mattias Grafstrom has since written to the FFIRI expressing regret at the 'inconvenience and disappointment' caused, and invited the Iranian federation to Zurich on May 20 to discuss World Cup preparations. Taj said he would use that meeting to seek explicit guarantees about the treatment of the Iranian delegation when it travels to the U.S. for the tournament.

'We need a guarantee there, for our trip, that they have no right to insult the symbols of our system, especially the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps,' Taj told IRIB on the sidelines of a pro-government rally in Tehran. 'This is something they must pay serious attention to. If there is such a guarantee and the responsibility is clearly assumed, then an incident like what happened in Canada will not happen again.'

Iran are drawn into Group G alongside Belgium, Egypt and New Zealand, with two group matches scheduled for Los Angeles and one in Seattle. The U.S. State Department has signalled it will treat the Iranian football party differently from the political establishment. 'Washington had no objections to Iranian players participating in the tournament,' Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last week, 'but no one with ties to the IRGC would be admitted to the country.'

Taj, who served as a high-ranking IRGC official in Isfahan Province before moving into football administration, signalled that the federation is willing to walk away from the trip if those guarantees are not provided. 'We are going to the World Cup, for which we qualified, and our host is FIFA, not Mr. Trump or America,' he said. 'If they accept hosting us, then they must also accept that they must not insult our military institutions in any way. Because if they do, then naturally it could create the same kind of situation that happened in Canada, where there was a possibility we might have to return.'

The standoff is unfolding against a wider geopolitical backdrop. Iran's participation in the World Cup has been in question since the U.S. and Israel launched air strikes on the Islamic Republic in late February. Iran's top-flight league remains suspended, and the domestic-based contingent of the squad has been training in Tehran. Taj said the FFIRI is trying to arrange at least one friendly in Turkey, where the team played Nigeria and Costa Rica in late March.

FIFA has not commented publicly on whether any such guarantee is within its power to provide. The federation's leverage is limited: U.S. consular and immigration decisions are made by the State Department, not by tournament hosts, and the IRGC's terrorist designation in U.S. and Canadian law cannot be set aside for a sporting event. The May 20 meeting in Zurich is now likely to determine whether the matter escalates into a formal travel impasse with five weeks to go before kickoff.

Reporting: Based on Reuters' May 6, 2026 dispatch and earlier statements from the U.S. State Department. Quotes from Mehdi Taj and Marco Rubio are reproduced as cited by Reuters and IRIB.