{"id":25592,"date":"2026-04-30T03:01:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T03:01:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/25592\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T03:01:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T03:01:11","slug":"canadian-official-backs-up-report-that-iranian-soccer-chief-was-denied-entry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/25592\/","title":{"rendered":"Canadian official backs up report that Iranian soccer chief was denied entry"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>OTTAWA, Ontario (AP) \u2014 Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand said Wednesday it was her \u201cunderstanding\u201d that Iranian soccer officials were denied entry into her country ahead of the FIFA Congress meeting in Vancouver just weeks before the start of the <a class=\"Link AnClick-LinkEnhancement\" data-gtm-enhancement-style=\"LinkEnhancementA\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/fifa-world-cup\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">World Cup.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Anand appeared to confirm a report from Tasnim, an Iranian news agency associated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, but she said the denial was \u201cunintentional.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Tasnim reported that Iranian Football Federation president Mehdi Taj and two other Iranian officials were denied entry due to \u201cinappropriate behavior of immigration officials\u201d at Toronto\u2019s Pearson Airport.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s not my personal lead, but my understanding is that there is a revocation of the permission. It was unintentional, but I\u2019ll leave it to the minister to indicate,\u201d Anand said, apparently referring to Immigration Minister Lena Diab.<\/p>\n<p>The online news outlet Iran International first reported that Taj had been granted a visa Monday and had been removed from Canada late Tuesday evening due to his connections to the IRGC, a listed terrorist entity in Canada.<\/p>\n<p>An emailed response from Diab\u2019s office said all visa applications are reviewed on a case-by-case basis by trained officials.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhile we cannot comment on individual cases due to privacy laws, the government has been clear and consistent: IRGC officials are inadmissible to Canada and have no place in our country,\u201d said Taous Ait, Diab\u2019s press secretary.<\/p>\n<p>The FIFA Congress gathering comes weeks before the start of a World Cup that is being co-hosted by the U.S., Canada and Mexico. Representatives from each of the 211 federations in soccer\u2019s governing body were expected to attend the event that begins Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>FIFA did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Iran\u2019s status for the event.<\/p>\n<p>___<\/p>\n<p>AP soccer: <a class=\"Link AnClick-LinkEnhancement\" data-gtm-enhancement-style=\"LinkEnhancementA\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/soccer\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/soccer<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OTTAWA, Ontario (AP) \u2014 Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand said Wednesday it was her \u201cunderstanding\u201d that Iranian&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25593,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3916,17,12483,1314,592,11040,12482,205,49,12481,48,218],"class_list":{"0":"post-25592","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-canada","8":"tag-anita-anand","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-canada-national-soccer-team","11":"tag-fifa","12":"tag-general-news","13":"tag-iran-government","14":"tag-lena-diab","15":"tag-soccer","16":"tag-sports","17":"tag-sports-middle-east","18":"tag-toronto","19":"tag-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25592\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}