Mexico agrees to host Iran’s World Cup team amid U.S. refusal

Mexico has agreed to let Iran’s national football team stay on its soil during the World Cup after FIFA intervened when the United States would not allow the squad to remain in the country throughout the tournament. Claudia Sheinbaum said Mexico had “no reason to deny” Iran the chance to base itself there, turning a routine logistics decision into a diplomatic test for the 2026 event.

The move shifts Iran’s base camp from Tucson, Arizona, to Tijuana, Mexico, just south of San Diego, and gives the Iranian federation a workaround for visa and travel complications that had clouded its plans. Mehdi Taj said the change would help avoid those problems, and that the team could travel directly to Mexico on Iran Air flights. FIFA had asked for guarantees over visas, security and the treatment of the Iranian delegation before approving the move.

The issue reaches beyond camp location. Iran’s participation in the June 11 to July 19 tournament had already been thrown into question after the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran in late February. Taj was also reportedly refused entry to Canada for the FIFA Congress in Vancouver earlier this month because of alleged links to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a designation Mexico does not share with the United States and Canada. The episode shows how quickly geopolitical disputes can intrude on an event sold as global and borderless.

Iran will still have to navigate the match schedule itself. The team opens Group G against New Zealand on June 15, faces Belgium on June 21 and then meets Egypt on June 26 in Seattle. That means the squad’s base in Tijuana will be tied to repeated cross-border travel into the United States, where the political temperature around Iran remains high even as FIFA tries to smooth the tournament’s operations.

For Iran, the World Cup will be its fourth straight and seventh overall. Yet the national team has never advanced past the first round, a reminder that its return to the tournament stage has often been shaped as much by politics and logistics as by results on the field.