Iran say they plan to boycott the 2026 World Cup draw in the United States next week because of the limited number of visas for their delegation.<\/b><\/p>\n
According to the Tehran Times, the US has issued four visas to Iran’s delegation, but they do not include one for Mehdi Taj, the president of the country’s football federation.<\/p>\n
Taj said he had spoken to Fifa president Gianni Infantino about the issue.<\/p>\n
“We are evaluating our options, which will depend on timing and circumstances,” Taj said in an interview with Iranian television on Thursday.<\/p>\n
“We remain in close communication with the Iranian foreign ministry and other authorities, and we will take the necessary decision at the appropriate time.<\/p>\n
“The current position of the Iran Football Federation executive committee is that no one will attend the event unless all visas are issued.”<\/p>\n
The draw is scheduled to take place in Washington DC on Friday, 5 December at 17:00 GMT (12:00 local time).<\/p>\n
BBC Sport has contacted Fifa for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Iran say they plan to boycott the 2026 World Cup draw in the United States next week because…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":603222,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5311],"tags":[49,978,659],"class_list":{"0":"post-603221","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-united-states","9":"tag-us","10":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=603221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603221\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/603222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=603221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=603221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=603221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}