As President Donald Trump desperately tries to end the disastrous war of choice he launched on Iran — which seems certain to conclude with the terror-supporting theo-fascist regime being rewarded with more riches, sanctions relief and global influence than it could have dreamed of four months ago — the U.S. government isn’t taking any chances with what it sees as a crucial national security threat to the homeland.
I’m speaking, of course, about the Iranian men’s national soccer team, currently competing in the World Cup hosted by the U.S., Canada and Mexico.
The team was originally supposed to have its base camp for training and lodging in Tuscon, Arizona, but was compelled to relocate to Tijuana, Mexico, after the United States denied visas to members of the Iranian delegation. While the U.S. approved visas for Iran’s players, Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum confirmed to reporters, “The United States doesn’t want the Iranian national team to stay overnight in the United States.” Since the tournament started earlier this month, the Iranian team has only been permitted to enter the U.S. one day before its scheduled matches in Los Angeles, and was required to leave immediately afterward. The U.S. will now magnanimously allow the Iranians to arrive two days before their next match in Seattle. They will still have to leave the country right after they’re done playing.
A Trump administration official told MS NOW earlier in June, “We will not allow the Iranian team to abuse this system to sneak terrorists into the United States under false pretenses.” Earlier this week, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told Fox News the Iranian delegation tried to smuggle into the country someone with “direct ties” to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and he credited Trump for denying Iran the ability to activate terrorist “sleeper cells” on U.S. soil. Mullin provided no evidence to back up this claim.
If the idea seems absurd that Iran would attempt a devastating attack on the U.S. during the World Cup — carried out by cunning terrorists disguised as soccer officials under the watchful eye of the U.S. government — consider the larger context.
Iran’s rulers are among the world’s worst state supporters of terrorism, including being the primary funders of Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza and the Houthis in Yemen. They backed Bashar Assad’s murderous regime in Syria until it fell in 2024. They have oppressed their own people for nearly half a century and earlier this year killed thousands (perhaps tens of thousands) of citizens protesting their sadistic rule. Iran is without a doubt a menacing threat to Israel and numerous U.S. allies in the Middle East.
Making the Iranian team travel just one day before a match, then offering the players no time to recover afterward, makes the U.S. look like a small and petty competitor.
The war that Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched in February was based on the unsubstantiated premise that the regime was about to have a nuclear weapon. And yet, the war has brought an even more extreme set of rulers to power in Iran. Worse, America and Israel’s fiasco is poised to make the regime hundreds of billions of dollars richer, with fewer sanctions and less diplomatic isolation. Most crucially, the war handed Iran a new weapon it could conceivably deploy forever: the threat to close the Strait of Hormuz and hold the global economy hostage.
In short, Trump started a war, swiftly lost it and he appears willing to do almost anything to end it and return to something worse than the Feb. 27 status quo. Meanwhile, his administration is harassing a soccer team — ostensibly for national security.
As Trump sheepishly tries to spin his calamitous defeat into a “peace through strength,” the government’s harsh scrutiny of the Iranian men’s soccer team delegation looks like security theater of the most pitiful kind. And making the Iranian team travel just one day before a match, then offering the players no time to recover afterward, makes the U.S. look like a small and petty competitor. It’s loser behavior from a losing, war-making president.
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