The Beautiful Game and the Ugly War
Iran, the World Cup, and FIFA's Gold-Plated Peace Prize
Published May 26, 2026
The 2026 FIFA World Cup begins June 11 in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. It is the largest sporting event in human history — 48 teams, 104 matches, billions of viewers across every time zone on earth. It is also, uniquely in the history of the tournament, a World Cup in which the host nation is at war with one of the participating teams. There is no playbook for this. FIFA is making it up as it goes, and the results have been as chaotic as everything else connected to this administration.
Iran qualified for the World Cup last March — their fourth consecutive qualification, a genuine achievement for a football program that has built real quality over the past decade. Mehdi Taremi scored the goals that secured their place. Their group draws put them in Los Angeles and Seattle. Then, on February 28, the United States and Israel launched air strikes on Iran, killing the Supreme Leader and beginning a war that has left roughly 3,500 Iranians dead and more than 26,500 injured. Iran's sports minister declared immediately that participation was impossible. "Considering that this corrupt regime has assassinated our leader, under no circumstances can we participate in the World Cup," he told state television. "Our children are not safe."
What followed has been a months-long negotiation between the Iranian football federation — which represents players who have spent years preparing for this moment — and the geopolitical reality surrounding them. The federation has consistently sought solutions rather than withdrawal, because the players want to play. That distinction between the government's political position and the athletes' human reality has driven every development since.
Trump's public position has been characteristically contradictory. FIFA President Gianni Infantino confirmed that Trump told him the Iranian team is welcome to compete. Trump simultaneously suggested it might not be appropriate for Iran to play in the U.S. "for their own life and safety." Marco Rubio said Iranian players are welcome but that individuals with alleged ties to the IRGC could face entry restrictions. Trump has already suspended visa processing for applicants from nearly 75 countries including Iran — a blanket measure that affects not just Iranian football officials but players, staff, and journalists covering the team.
The visa problem became concrete when Iran's Football Federation president Mehdi Taj was refused entry into Canada ahead of last month's FIFA Congress. Iran subsequently submitted ten conditions to FIFA: timely visa issuance for players and staff, respect for Iran's national flag and anthem, adequate security at airports, hotels, and stadium routes, and guarantees that no member of the traveling party would be detained or denied entry on political grounds. These are not unreasonable demands for a nation at war with the host country. They are also demands that no other World Cup participant has ever had to make.
Mexico stepped in yesterday. President Claudia Sheinbaum announced that her country will serve as Iran's base of operations for the duration of the tournament. "The United States doesn't want the Iranian team to spend the night," Sheinbaum said — a statement that captures the situation with more precision than any diplomatic communiqué. The Iranian team will travel to Mexico on Iran Air flights, base themselves there, and either travel to their scheduled venues in Los Angeles and Seattle or have those matches relocated to Mexican cities. FIFA has shown flexibility. The players, it appears, will get to play.
The Iran situation threw an uncomfortable light on one of the more remarkable side events of the pre-tournament period. In December 2025, at the World Cup draw at the Kennedy Center in Washington, FIFA created a brand new award — the FIFA Peace Prize — and presented its inaugural edition to Donald Trump. The timing was not subtle. Trump had spent the year publicly campaigning for the Nobel Peace Prize. The Nobel committee did not oblige. Infantino, who has described himself as a close friend of the president and had previously said Trump deserved the Nobel for brokering a Gaza ceasefire, simply invented a prize and gave it to him instead. The trophy was a gold-plated globe considerably larger than an actual Nobel medal. Trump called it "one of the great honors of my life" and used his acceptance remarks to claim credit for a ceasefire between India and Pakistan — a claim India has repeatedly and publicly denied.
The Norwegian Football Association president called on FIFA to scrap the prize entirely, arguing that awarding such honors should be left to the Nobel Institute and that FIFA was politicizing sport in ways that would damage its credibility. Her concern proved prescient. The peace prize was awarded in December. The U.S. launched military strikes on Venezuela in January. The U.S. and Israel began bombing Iran in February. FIFA found itself in the position of having given its inaugural peace award to the leader of a country now at war with one of its World Cup participants — a participant being denied overnight accommodation on American soil and negotiating with a third country just to attend a tournament it legitimately qualified for.
Then came Paolo Zampolli. An Italian-American businessman appointed by Trump as Special Envoy for Global Partnerships — a title with no official connection to football or the World Cup — Zampolli told the Financial Times in April that he had suggested to both Trump and Infantino that Iran be replaced in the tournament by Italy. "I'm an Italian native and it would be a dream to see the Azzurri at a US-hosted tournament," he said. "With four titles, they have the pedigree to justify inclusion." The proposal was framed as an effort to repair the diplomatic relationship between Trump and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, which had frayed after Trump's public attacks on Pope Leo XIV — the first American-born pope — over the Iran war.
Italy's response was swift and unambiguous. The Italian Sports Minister dismissed the idea immediately. "Italy doesn't need Trump's support on an issue like this," he said. "I think we can manage on our own." Italian fans, far from welcoming the suggestion, found it more embarrassing than the failure to qualify — being handed a spot through political back channels felt like charity rather than football. Italy has failed to qualify for three consecutive World Cups, a genuine national wound. Being offered someone else's earned place as a diplomatic favor struck most Italians as a different and worse kind of humiliation.
FIFA shut it down without ceremony. "The Iranian team is coming, for sure," Infantino said. "Iran has to come if they are to represent their people. They really want to play, and they should play. Sport should be outside politics." The irony of the man who invented a peace prize for a sitting president invoking the principle that sport should be outside politics landed without apparent self-awareness.
What the Iran situation illustrates, more clearly than almost anything else this administration has produced, is what happens when the logic of personal relationships and political loyalty — the logic that put Huckabee in Jerusalem, Kushner in Paris, and Zampolli in a position to casually suggest rewriting World Cup qualification — is applied to institutions that have their own rules, their own constituencies, and their own forms of accountability. FIFA bent considerably to accommodate Trump. It invented a prize for him, appointed his daughter to a board, and gave his envoy informal access to its president. But it could not bend far enough to replace a qualified nation with an unqualified one, because 47 other nations and their football federations would not have accepted it, and because the sport itself — the players, the fans, the game — has a reality that political arrangements cannot fully override.
Iran's players will likely play in this World Cup. They earned their place. Mexico will host them. The matches will happen. And the football, as it always does, will eventually crowd out everything else. The game has a way of insisting on itself regardless of the circumstances surrounding it. That persistence — the insistence of athletes on competing despite everything governments do around them — may be the most honest thing about the entire spectacle.
Sources: Al Jazeera reporting on Mexico hosting Iran team, May 25, 2026; Open The Magazine on Iran World Cup conditions, May 2026; CNBC reporting on FIFA Peace Prize, December 2026; Fortune reporting on FIFA Peace Prize, December 2025; Al Jazeera on FIFA Peace Prize criticism, April 2026; RTE Sport reporting on Italy-Iran swap proposal, April 2026; Sports Illustrated on Zampolli proposal, April 2026; Gulf News on Iranian sports minister statement; Al Jazeera on Iran negotiating match relocations to Mexico, March 2026.