INGLEWOOD (CNS) – Iran will begin play in the 2026 World Cup Monday evening against New Zealand with organizers predicting thousands of émigrés and children of émigrés protesting outside SoFi Stadium.
A small group protested outside Intuit Dome, adjacent to SoFi Stadium, Sunday calling for Iran to be expelled from FIFA, soccer’s global governing body.
Nasser Shariff, the president of the California Society for Democracy in Iran, told KTLA that the Football Federation Islamic Republic of Iran is controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
“They’re terrorist organizations,” Shariff told the station. “We believe that FIFA, if they believe in their own principles, they need to give a red card to Iran’s football federation and (not give them) a place on the world stage.”
There were also small protests outside the team’s Manhattan Beach hotel and Dignity Health Sports Park in Carson, where it practiced Sunday.
Protesters have said they plan to carry Iran’s pre-revolution “Lion and Sun” flag during Monday’s protest. FIFA has banned it from being taken into the stadium because of its regulations prohibiting banners, flags, apparel or paraphernalia that are of a “political, offensive and/or discriminatory nature.”
If any of the flags are unfurled inside the stadium, the Iranian team has threatened to halt the match.
“We don’t care if you stop the game. This is not even our team,” 22- year-old Iranian-American political science student Sara Barahman told the French news agency Agence France-Presse.
Some fans say they will wear shirts with the flag to the match.
The Greater Los Angeles area is home to the largest population of Iranian ancestry in the world outside of Iran, with estimates ranging from 375,000 people to more than 500,000.
A lawsuit was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court Wednesday seeking a temporary restraining order against FIFA from denying admission into SoFi Stadium or any other stadium to any spectator in possession of the Lion and Sun flag, confiscating the flags inside the stadium, removing spectators from the stadiums or their vicinity because of such flags.
The suit filed by Sam Kermanian and the Institute For Voices of Liberty cites the California Constitution’s protection of free speech as the reason the temporary restraining order should be granted.
Kermanian is a member of the Board of Directors of the institute, which describes itself as “a nonprofit, educational public policy institute dedicated to reflecting the aspirations of the people of Iran.”
Kermanian said in the suit that he has purchased tickets for Iran’s World Cup matches and intends to carry and display the flag at the matches “as a means of expressing his political views regarding freedom, democracy, secular governance and opposition to the current Iranian regime.”
Other defendants in the suit include Los Angeles County, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and the city of Inglewood.
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