World Cup Politics: US Immigration Curbs Target Iran’s National Team -By Fransiscus Nanga Roka

The World Cup should be the last bastion of any genuine football sense. However, that illusion was busted in 2026. Now the U.S., a co-host of the tournament is being accused of weaponizing immigration policy and putting Iran in an off the field position down against the wall, not on it. The stories that players and support staff in Iran are facing tough restrictions on securing visas that FIFA have been forced to switch their training base for the team to Tijuana, Mexico aren’t merely a bureaucratic inconvenience. They are a direct attack on the idea of sporting neutrality.

Clarification: this is not on regular immigration control. States have an absolute claim over their borders, but hosting the World Cup is not a normal exercise of sovereignty. It is a legal and ethical duty to provide an equal, non-discriminatory playing field. If a host nation picks and chooses how to hamper the preparations of a qualified team, it is no longer just a host. It has become an advantage gatekeeper.

Both immediate and structural, the consequences. An off season coach overseas, distant from the sites of matches, places stress on logistics, psychological disruption and disadvantage in competition. This is not neutrality; this is policy-induced asymmetry. And it takes what should be a level playing field and turns it into the battlefield of diplomatic warfare.

As for FIFA, it has dug its own hole of credibility crisis. It has insisted for decades that politics should stay out of football. But that claim sounds hollow now. Handing hosting rights to states with a strong record of being regularly predicted geopolitically at war with one another without any enforceable guarantees not to was always going to be a bit of a gamble. That seems less a misfire than institutional neglect.

The governing body cannot wait for base camp operational changes to hand-wave its way out. This is not a solution; this is an acknowledgement that you have lost. It’s as if FIFA’s authority is only performative, at best, if it cannot even force host nations to abide by rudimentary principles of fairness. The issue is no longer if politics will infiltrate into sport, as it already has done  but whether FIFA chooses to fight against it or bow to it.

For whom the larger implications are profoundly disturbing. What stops future hosts from actually tightening immigration rulings against select teams? You say you have to hold it up to a standard, and do so very selectively. Today it is Iran. Tomorrow it might be every country that has been caught up in some geopolitical drama. The message is clear: just because you are qualified on the field does not mean that your qualifications off of it will be shared equally.

This moment speaks to a deeper contradiction at the center of global sport. The World Cup sells itself as a worldwide jubilee, yet absent from its beer ads is the sad fact that it relies on nation-states whose interests are scarce universal. In cases where those interests conflict with certain ideals of sport, the ideals tend to bend—and quite frequently break as well.

And there is an even less comfortable legal void. Finally, sport international law is weak in their structure because also has no enforcement mechanism to sanction host nations who imposed the such kind of indirect discrimination. Although human rights frameworks center on non-discrimination and equal treatment, they are primarily aspirational in this regard. Because there are no binding consequences, violations turn into annoyances rather than career ending breaches.

The US could argue that its policies are all politically neutral because they do not single out any particular ruling party and are implemented in response to national security considerations. Neutrality is defined by impact, not intent. Such neutrality can be a rhetorical cover for disproportionate burdens on one team

The 2026 World Cup was supposed to be a celebration of working across borders. Instead, it threatens to be a case study in how readily sport can be hijacked by the very politics that its constituents claim to rise above. Iran has been kept in the tournament but only on terms that call into question the very integrity of it.

When we discover that the challenges of greatness in sport are somehow intertwined with visa approvals and especially cross-border political wrangling if its rules are determined more by expedience than pedigree perhaps then the World Cup is a conspicuous example not just of football’s monumental significance as a tournament anymore but also a live reality. Geopolitical stage one with an outcome starting well before the first whistle blows.

Faculty of Law University 17 August 1945 Surabaya and Managing Partner Law Firm Victorious Indonesia