{"id":171060,"date":"2026-06-21T21:22:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-21T21:22:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/171060\/"},"modified":"2026-06-21T21:22:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-21T21:22:14","slug":"revolutionary-guard-claim-is-outright-lie-says-irans-football-federation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/171060\/","title":{"rendered":"Revolutionary Guard claim is \u2018outright lie\u2019, says Iran\u2019s football federation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">US claims that an individual with ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) tried to join the Iran team\u2019s flight to the United States on Saturday are \u201cfabricated and entirely baseless allegations\u201d, the country\u2019s football federation (FFIRI) has said.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Markwayne Mullin, the US Homeland Security Secretary, told Fox News on Sunday that someone under the guise of being the Iranian federation (FFIRI) president tried to board the team\u2019s flight to Los Angeles from Mexico for Sunday\u2019s World Cup match against Belgium, but was prevented from doing so.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Mullin did not name the man but said he had \u201cdirect ties\u201d to the IRGC, something the FFIRI has rejected outright. The FFIRI\u2019s president is Mehdi Taj.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">\u201cThe FFIRI strongly condemns the remarks made by Markwayne Mullin, the US Secretary of Homeland Security, regarding the president of the Iranian football federation and members of the official national team delegation, and considers them to be a series of false, fabricated, and entirely baseless allegations,\u201d the federation said in a statement.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">\u201cThe claim that an official representative of the Iranian football federation attempted to board a flight to enter the United States yesterday and was prevented from doing so is an outright and undeniable lie. This claim is so unfounded that those who made it are well aware that such an incident never occurred in the first place.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">\u201cIt is regrettable that a senior US official has resorted to spreading false statements and misinformation in order to justify restrictions imposed on members of the Iranian national team delegation.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">\u201cWhen a specific, verifiable, and individually targeted allegation is made and that allegation is fundamentally false, it naturally calls into question the credibility of the other accusations as well.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"US claims that an individual with ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) tried to join the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":171061,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[46206,1216,10911,52821,105,52820,34,52822,46,12243,1860,2979,8816,51,2577],"class_list":["post-171060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-iran","tag-amir-ghalenoei","tag-belgium","tag-department-of-homeland-security","tag-ffiri","tag-fox-news","tag-homeland-security-secretary","tag-iran","tag-iranian-football-federation","tag-islamic-revolutionary-guard-corps","tag-los-angeles","tag-markwayne-mullin","tag-mexico","tag-new-zealand","tag-united-states","tag-world-cup"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116790201031766097","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171060\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}