World Cup, Imperialism, and the Politics of Football: Interview with an Iranian Anti-Imperialist Scholar

Navid Farnia & Pambazuka News (Interviewer) 

In this interview, Pambazuka News dialogues with Navid Farnia on developments around the 2026 FIFA World in the United States, which is co-hosting the tournament. The interview covers US domestic policies towards immigrants, denial of entry for a FIFA official from Somalia, travel ban and restrictions on federation officials and athletes from Iran and Iraq. 

Question 1: The Travel Ban and the Somali Referee

The US denied entry to Omar Abdulkadir Artan, a Somali referee and FIFA's top African official, despite a valid visa, directly due to the travel ban covering Somalia. The Islamic Republic of Iran’s national team faced visa uncertainty, with 14 Iranian officials refused entry. Iraq’s national team’s photographer was denied entry too. What does it mean when a host nation uses a global sporting event to selectively enforce a racialized exclusion regime—and how does this mirror the broader US posture toward the Muslim world (or the darker nations)? 

I think it's important to start by saying that the three countries mentioned—Iran, Somalia, and Iraq—the US has been and is at war with these countries. With respect to Iran, the US has been hitting Iran in the last few days alone, let alone the previous aggressions. The US has been occupying Iraq since 2003, and occupation is war. It continues to occupy Iraq, and continues to use Iraq as a launchpad to attack Iran. And it recently came out that the Zionists are also using occupied Iraq as a launchpad to attack Iran. So Iraqi sovereignty has been compromised for decades now. The US has also been at war with Somalia for decades, since the early 2000s and specifically, the days of Bush and Obama. Trump has continued that war by hitting Somalia more than any other country with drones during his first term.

All of these wars are related to what's going on with respect to the World Cup and to the issues mentioned in this question, like the exclusion of the Somali referee Omar Abdulkadir Artan, who, as you mentioned, has a valid visa. This is a way to humiliate the person himself, the Somali people, and also the people of the African continent. It reinforces and reinstantiates white world supremacy through acts of humiliation, targeting, and exclusion. So we need to start there.

We also need to consider the treatment of this referee in relation to the ICE invasion of Minneapolis and Trump's rhetoric about Somali immigrants (since Minneapolis has the largest Somali population in the US). At the same time, there is this Somaliland secessionist movement in Somalia. The Zionist entity is the first entity or “state” to recognize Somaliland (though, as we know, the Zionist “state” is a fictive and temporary state itself). The UAE seems to be close to recognizing Somaliland and has a good relationship with Somaliland. These entities are ultimately acting in the interests of US imperialism. All of these different issues fundamentally contribute to the destabilization of Somali society, the Somali political establishment, and the Somali state. The larger political question of Somalia is therefore related to what's going on with this referee. This is how these racialized exclusion regimes function.

With Iran, it is the same package of humiliation that amounts to psychological warfare. This Somali referee had a valid visa, as the question points out, and they still did not let him in. Are they going to let the Iranian players in? Are they going to let players from other countries in? There are visa issues with players from Haiti, Iraq, South Africa, a Swiss player of African descent, and these are merely the cases that have made the news. With Iranian players, they have had to move their training and practice from Tucson, Arizona to Tijuana because the United States would not let them stay beyond their games. Now they are saying they will force them to come to the US only on game day and leave on game day as well, though a US official claimed that Iranian players can actually enter the country the day before their matches. 

All of these humiliation tactics, all these forms of targeting, repression, and exclusion, also aim to give the imperialist countries – specifically the United States – a competitive advantage. This competitive advantage has existed historically. Imperialist countries have had superior training facilities, equipment, and access. These forms of humiliation also provide a built-in competitive advantage to the United States and other imperialist countries, other white countries, to show the world that they are superior in every way possible, including in sports.

It is also important to add that Russia has been banned from FIFA. Belarus is not banned, but the Belarus national team cannot have home matches on its soil – it has to have them in a neighboring country, and no fans are allowed at Belarus's matches. Meanwhile, the Zionist entity has not faced any sanction whatsoever. In carrying out its genocide, the Zionist entity has also killed hundreds of Palestinian football players and detained many more. Many people have therefore demanded that FIFA ban the Zionist entity. FIFA has refused to do so. Despite essentially being rewarded for its genocide, the Zionist entity still could not make the World Cup. And it is well-documented that many European national teams did not want to play their matches against “Israel.” 

The UAE, far from being sanctioned for its participation and facilitation of the genocide in Sudan, was very close to making the World Cup itself – two games away. Iraq eliminated the UAE from World Cup contention. There were videos of Sudanese people celebrating when Iraq eliminated the UAE. These entities that are carrying out genocides are being privileged in every way possible, whereas the countries that refuse to bow down to Zionist-imperialism are punished. This shows how FIFA is not only complicit but an active and opportunistic partner in imperialism. 

Lastly, I’ll just say that despite all of this imperial violence, Iran and Iraq qualified for the World Cup, and Palestine was very close to doing so as well. This reflects the resilience of the national cultures of these countries and their people’s ability to not only endure but even thrive amid the most brutal conditions. This fact should be celebrated.

Question 2: Iran's Boycott Threat

Iran threatened to boycott the official draw, and the IRI’s football chief vowed to "boycott America, but not the World Cup." Meanwhile, the Sport & Rights Alliance warned of a "climate of fear, uncertainty, and repression" surrounding the event. Comrades from the Black Alliance for Peace have called for boycotts of the World Cup in the US (but not necessarily Canada and Mexico). How do you read the US state's treatment of IRI’s national team and officials? Is this simply bureaucratic chaos, or is it a form of low-intensity warfare waged through border controls? 

Let me start by saying that Iran actually did boycott the official draw because part of its delegation were not given visas to enter the United States. So the entire delegation refused to come.

To answer the question, yes, this is absolutely part of the low-intensity or hybrid war against Iran and the larger Global South. The Iranian players finally received their visas last week, but part of the support staff were denied visas and cannot enter the country. Even with the players, we will see if they can get in (again, see the case of the Somali referee). Iranian fans cannot come from Iran to the United States to watch their national team play. A couple days ago, FIFA revoked Iran's ticket allocation. A certain number of tickets are allotted to each country's fans, and FIFA has removed Iran's ticket allocation. Again, this makes FIFA an active institutional partner in the hybrid and white supremacist war against Iran and the broader Global South.

But this is not at all unique to Iran. Fans from other countries are also not able to get in – fans from Haiti, Senegal, the Ivory Coast, and others. I saw a story that even fans from Scotland were denied visas. When it comes to players, you see the players of Senegal being humiliated, searched thoroughly on the tarmac as they get off the plane. Players from Uzbekistan being subjected to searches by drug-sniffing dogs. An Iraqi player – arguably their best player – held for questioning for 7 hours at Chicago O'Hare Airport. The Democratic Republic of Congo national team was also forced to quarantine before coming to the US supposedly due to the Ebola outbreak in Central Africa. All of these forms of humiliation reflect a larger war against the Global South.

Now it happens that Iran and the larger Axis of Resistance are actively fighting a war against US imperialism and the Zionist regime. But even those countries that are not in active hostilities are also subjected to these forms of humiliation and repression. That shows that white supremacy itself reflects a global project and a global war against Global South peoples. 

The irony in all this is that you have players whose families originally come from Global South countries representing imperialist countries – France, England, the United States. Most of the French national team is of African descent. A large part of the US national team is non-white. Imperialist wars, along with the historical legacies of slavery and colonialism, have forcibly removed peoples from their homelands. Now they are representing the imperialist countries at the same time that players, support staff, and fans that represent their native countries in the Global South are being excluded. These racial contradictions should be understood in tandem.

All of this to say that yes, this is part of a low-intensity hybrid war against Iran and the rest of the Global South, but it is also representative of the centuries-long history of war and imperialist violence that the United States and the Western world have waged against the rest of the world.

I want to add a couple more things with respect to Iran on this question. First, I believe 17 of Iran's national team players have their club teams inside Iran. Iran's football league was forced to halt play in February. Most of Iran's national team players have not been playing club matches because their league has been on hiatus. That is a direct result of the Zionist-imperialist war imposed upon Iran.

Second, of Iran's three group stage matches, two are in Los Angeles and one is in Seattle. Iranian fans cannot come from Iran to watch these games. At the same time, Los Angeles has the largest Iranian population in the Western Hemisphere. Most of these Iranians in LA are anti-Islamic Republic. Many are pro-shah – not all – but many. For FIFA to put two of Iran's matches in Los Angeles is part of this psychological war being waged against Iran. Are there going to be pro-shah demonstrations outside the stadiums or in the streets of LA during the matches? Is the Iranian national team going to have to deal with this kind of circus-like atmosphere? Is that what the United States wants? It seems like it.

The third match is in Seattle – Iran against Egypt. FIFA designated that match as the Pride match because June is Pride month. That is another way the United States, working with FIFA, is trying to wage a psychological war against Iran. You have sports-washing and pink-washing going on simultaneously to demonize Iran and Egypt. We need to be aware of these insidious mechanisms that FIFA and the United States are trying to impose upon the Iranian national team. I support Pride, but there is a particular political reason why they designated this particular match as the Pride match, and we need to be cognizant of that. Here, you have the United States using various mechanisms of so-called inclusion as a way to undermine, disrupt, and wage a low-intensity war against Iran. This is how liberalism is being mobilized against Iran during this World Cup.

Question 3: Labor Strikes and ICE at the Stadiums

Two thousand workers at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles have authorized a strike over fear of deportation raids by ICE during the tournament. How does this internal repression of migrant workers connect to the exclusion of foreign athletes and fans and imperialism more broadly? Is the US World Cup revealing the same carceral logic of imperialism, regardless if people come to play, to work, or to seek refuge? 

I absolutely see a relationship between the repression and violence against migrant workers and immigrants in general and the repression, exclusion, and humiliation of athletes, support staff, and fans from other countries. This is a racialized logic. It is part and parcel of what imperialism is and what it does. Policing and securitized violence are central aspects of imperialism. That is how it plays out in the domestic space, which I will talk more about in the last question.

But I also want to talk about the economic conditions under which the World Cup is taking place. This is the first World Cup where FIFA has instituted dynamic pricing – tickets are not at fixed value as in previous World Cups. Ticket values increase exponentially for the more in-demand games. Ticket prices for the World Cup final are as high as $30,000 a ticket. And this is the first World Cup where FIFA is allowing the resale of tickets, from which it is also taking a cut of the profits. Some resale tickets are reaching as high as $2 million. This is not specific to football. In other sports, ticket prices are also rising. I saw a story that a fan bought two tickets worth $1,000,000 to attend an NBA Finals game. 

Importantly, all of this indicates a crisis of accumulation. Prices are going up because the availability of services and goods are not as expansive as they once were. This crisis reflects the reality that the capitalist class in the Western world is no longer able to dictate the terms of exploitation and extraction in the Global South as it once could. This is a fundamental victory of anti-imperialist movements, from Southern Africa to West Asia to West Africa and beyond. So we now see these forms of nickel-and-diming, squeezing every penny possible out of people to such an extent that the West is cannibalizing its own middle class and re-proletarianizing the petty bourgeoisie. In doing so, it must also get rid of Black and Brown workers. This is where the militarized police and paramilitary organizations like ICE play a major role. The entire process reflects the demise of US power in the world. It is a vicious cycle: the violence of the United States accelerates its decline, and its decline leads to greater violence.

The World Cup is a microcosm for all this. When workers say they are going to go on strike, that exacerbates the crisis of accumulation. Whether or not the workers at SoFi Stadium actually follow through, we are already witnessing strikes here in the United States and throughout the Western world. Things are falling apart. 

Question 4: The Larger Meaning of The World Cup

The 2026 World Cup fiasco—with its travel bans, denied visas, worker strikes, and diplomatic humiliation—is not an accident but an expression of a deeper system. What lessons should the masses draw from this event? And what does it suggest about the impossibility of hosting a truly "universal" event under US sovereignty? 

Although the US’s hostile nature has been clear to much of the world for at least decades, it has never been more apparent. The facade of a democratic regime – of a “beacon of freedom” – is completely gone. Just as Operation Al Aqsa Flood eradicated the foundational myth of the Zionist project, anti-imperialist resistance is actively deconstructing the myth of the United States and its liberal ideals. For those of us who are anti-imperialists, for those who have been victims of imperialism, that was always apparent.

But the process by which we got to this point is incredibly important. For instance, if we are to think about this question in the context of sports, for me, the 1996 Atlanta Olympics are instructive. Some people may not remember, but there was a bombing in Atlanta during the Olympics. The perpetrator was a right-wing extremist and army veteran named Eric Rudolph, who openly reviled what he called “global socialism.” Back then, people like Rudolph were seen as extremists. Now, the US government openly boasts these kinds of views. We are seeing it play out through mechanisms like ICE, through these psychological operations meant to humiliate Global South countries.

After the 1996 Olympics, Atlanta underwent a process of what city officials called “modernization” and “beautification,” which meant displacing Black residents, destroying Black communities to build new structures and attract capital. But capitalist investment does not take place if these firms do not feel secure in their investments. So Atlanta drastically increased securitization after 1996. The bombing drove that securitization. A bombing committed by a white right-wing extremist led to a securitization process that primarily targeted Black and Brown people. 

As part of this securitization, Atlanta invested in police, and capital invested in Atlanta. Capitalist investment took up more real estate, and more Black people were gentrified from the city. This process culminated in the construction of Cop City in the 2020s. Cop City opened last year, 2025.

In short, the violence of these sporting events begins in the streets, in these communities. The targeting of Black people, Native American people, and Latinos in cities like Atlanta, Washington, Chicago, Los Angeles, Minneapolis – the violence starts there and ripples outward. For those who see the violence of what the US is doing with respect to fans trying to come and watch games – the denial of access – you should also understand that the visa restrictions, travel bans, and racial exclusions that are exemplified in the World Cup are intrinsically connected to the violence of the police, the National Guard, the army, and ICE in US cities.

The World Cup is the nexus at which these racial, economic, and imperial contradictions come together. What is happening in places like Iran, Somalia, Haiti – where there is an occupation – the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq, Mexico – is related to what is happening in the streets of Los Angeles, Miami, Atlanta, New York, and Chicago. We cannot separate these.

The larger lesson here is that people are actively resisting all these forms of violence. And in many respects, they are winning. They are fomenting an insurmountable crisis of US imperialism, US capitalist accumulation, and the regime of white supremacy. That resistance will continue to escalate as these contradictions become more apparent and more irreconcilable. That is the greatest sign of hope I see in all this. Despite all the violence, exclusion, and humiliation, all these things are the result of an empire in crisis, being exposed to the world – and that will only harbor more resistance.

Navid Farnia is a scholar of African American Studies. His research broadly explores the relationship between racial oppression in the United States and U.S. imperialism with a focus on revolutionary movements and counterrevolutionary responses. Navid’s book manuscript, National Liberation in an Imperialist World: Race, Counterrevolution, and the United States, traces the U.S. national security state’s evolution by examining how U.S. officials responded to national liberation movements at home and abroad from the 1950s to 1980. Navid has also written on the impact of economic sanctions imposed by the United States on Third World countries, the emergence of a multipolar world order, the South African liberation leader Chris Hani, and the regional dynamics of the ongoing Palestinian liberation struggle. Navid is a member of the Anti-Imperialist Scholars Collective.