Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told reporters this week he was thrilled Iran was knocked out of the World Cup.

“I’m just glad they’re done, and they’re not coming back,” Mullin said, according to Politico. “I was so happy when we were able to pull their visas and said they could leave U.S. soil, and I might have sung a song or two, or maybe danced a happy dance.”

In the pantheon of Trumpian rhetoric, Mullin’s comments are first-rate: classless, needlessly turning an unrelated issue into culture-war fare, and overall bad for U.S. policy.

The World Cup is a joyful occasion for the nations of the world to unite over love of sport and competition. Yet the Trump administration has done everything in its power to politicize the event, including posting messages of support for the U.S. men’s team laced with right-wing nationalist rhetoric. It has used the tournament like a pawn in its larger geopolitical strategy by treating the Iranian team as a national security threat.

According to Politico, Mullin alleged that Iran’s team tried to bring to the U.S. “numerous individuals with ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, including personnel who had never previously traveled with the national team and two individuals presented as media members had connections to IRGC intelligence.” The Iranian Embassy in Mexico did not respond to a request for comment, Politico noted. Iran has called previous claims by Mullin about efforts to bring an individual with links to the IRGC into the United States “fabricated and entirely baseless.”

The Trump administration did not present evidence to substantiate its claims or reveal its criteria for alleging “ties” to the IRGC. But given the Department of Homeland Security’s track record of false and misleading claims about immigrant behavior, there’s good reason to be skeptical. Moreover, even if the allegations were true, it made no sense as a pretext for U.S. officials to systematically mistreat and then badmouth Iran’s team. 

It was the U.S. government’s prerogative to issue or deny visas to visitors, and it denied them to  several members of Iran’s support staff. But how did that justify forcing Iran to move its training base from Arizona to Mexico? Or giving the team less time to prepare for matches in the cities where they were playing? Or giving them less time to recover afterward? Given that Iran’s team was treated like a band of criminals — and not elite athletes engaged in an international tournament — it’s miraculous that the Iranians achieved three draws and nearly made it to the knock-out stage.

After all this, Mullin had the opportunity to wish Iran’s team well or stay silent. Instead he gloried in their loss and underscored the narrative that the team should be viewed purely as a proxy for the Iranian government.

“These remarks once again demonstrate that U.S. officials have no commitment to international law or the principles expected of a host nation capable of organizing a global sporting event,” Iran’s soccer federation said in a statement. “The fact that he openly celebrates Iran’s elimination says far more about him than it does about our team. It reflects a level of pettiness that cannot even tolerate the presence of a football team competing on the world’s biggest stage.”

The federation is right. And it’s a reminder of how Mullin’s comments are not just unsportsmanlike, they’re bad diplomacy. The U.S. is in negotiations with Iran to wind down a war in which the U.S. has faced a humiliating loss and lacks the leverage to extract good terms. Why would a prominent Trump official bask in Iran being ousted from the World Cup, a globally watched opportunity to use soft power? A long-term thinker might have used the tournament to show Iran that the U.S. could be fair-minded. Instead, the Trump administration confirmed countless Iranians’ suspicions that the U.S. is treacherous and untrustworthy, as if hawks in Iran needed  more ammunition.

Is the U.S. government’s treatment of Iran’s soccer team going to single-handedly torch war negotiations? Of course not. But it certainly didn’t help anything either. 

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