Iranian team\u2019s trip to Seattle was delayed by 25 minutes as Taremi and Alhoei were held up for an undisclosed reason.<\/p>\n
Published On 24 Jun 202624 Jun 2026<\/p>\n
Iran\u2019s football federation says its star forward Mehdi Taremi and assistant coach Saeed Alhoei were held up by United States host officials as the team departed Mexico for their last group-stage World Cup match in Seattle.<\/p>\n
Officials \u201ccaused problems\u201d for the duo, delaying their delegation as they travelled to the US for their match against Egypt, FFIRI announced in a statement on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cDuring the national team\u2019s third trip to the United States, host officials disturbed Saeed Alhoei and Mehdi Taremi, delaying the convoy\u2019s departure to Seattle for the match against Egypt,\u201d the statement said.<\/p>\n
While the federation did not specify the reasons for the hold-up and whether Taremi and Alhoei were subject to questioning, it confirmed that both joined the delegation after 25 minutes and they departed with them for Seattle.<\/p>\n
Iran\u2019s squad and support staff have been based in Tijuana, Mexico, as they arrived for the World Cup amid the US-Israeli war on their country.<\/p>\n
Their delegations have travelled to the US twice, arriving a day before their fixtures and departing soon after the full-time whistle. Both matches were hosted in Los Angeles, California, and the third one will also be played on the US West Coast, in Seattle, Washington.<\/p>\n
The incident comes a day after US authorities claimed to have eased travel restrictions on Iran\u2019s World Cup delegation, allowing them to travel to Seattle two days prior to their game but still requiring them to leave immediately afterwards.<\/p>\n
Iranian players and sports officials have decried the American hosts\u2019 treatment of Team Melli, which had to set up its base camp in Mexico while playing all three of its group-stage matches on the US West Coast.<\/p>\n
US officials have suggested that their restrictions on the Iranian team have to do with security, without providing details of how the stay of internationally renowned athletes in the country could pose a threat to anyone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Iranian team\u2019s trip to Seattle was delayed by 25 minutes as Taremi and Alhoei were held up for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":176184,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[34,2980,2979,49,42,1023,51,57,73,2577,3222],"class_list":["post-176183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-iran","tag-iran","tag-latin-america","tag-mexico","tag-middle-east","tag-news","tag-sport","tag-united-states","tag-us-canada","tag-us-israel-war-on-iran","tag-world-cup","tag-world-cup-2026"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116807207723478911","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176183","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=176183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176183\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/176184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}