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As the name implies, the World Cup in the United States will include teams from around the world, including Iran. Two games will be in Los Angeles, which has a huge Iranian community. Libby Rainey of LAist News reports.
LIBBY RAINEY, BYLINE: It's a Sunday morning in LA, and members of Arya FC are warming up for a soccer match.
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RAINEY: This group of mainly Iranians has been in a league together for years, and now they're wrestling with complicated feelings about the Iranian team playing in their city. Nader Adeli follows soccer in his home country of Iran and is excited to root for those players on the world stage. He hopes politics will be left out of it. He thinks a lot of his teammates feel the same way.
NADER ADELI: They want the team to be here, lots of us. We registered to win the ticket for this tournament.
RAINEY: Bobby Riahi, another player, expressed more mixed feelings about cheering for the Iranian team.
BOBBY RIAHI: People are oppressed in Iran, right? Given the condition, given the war and everything, cheering for a team that, you know, not everybody's heart is in it, it's hard.
RAINEY: Mehran Janani says some people don't want the team here at all.
MEHRAN JANANI: There are some folks that are excited. There are some folks are not happy for the presence of Iranian team. Now, that all comes down to politics, unfortunately.
RAINEY: The dynamics on this soccer field mirror a larger narrative tension in the diaspora, according to Niki Akhavan. She's Iranian American and a professor at The Catholic University of America in D.C., where she studies Iranian culture and media. She's also a soccer fan and has been following conversations around the coming World Cup. She says that during the last World Cup, there was a push from some Iranians around the world to boycott the team after a crackdown on protests about women's rights and other issues in Iran. Now she thinks the war has resurfaced those conversations, as some oppose the war and others are frustrated that it hasn't led to regime change. Some, she says, associate the team with the government.
NIKI AKHAVAN: There's this narrative that, oh, it's not the Iranian team, it's the Islamic Republic's team.
RAINEY: Akhavan herself sees the team as representatives of the Iranian people, not their government.
AKHAVAN: My argument is you can't concede to the state and say, OK, well, you know, it's your team. No, it's a national team. And so you want to support that team.
RAINEY: While Iranians in LA navigate these tricky politics, some are hoping the World Cup can foster unity after Iran's deadly crackdown against protesters in January and the U.S. war that followed. Shaheen Ferdowsi runs a Persian restaurant called Meymuni Cafe. It's near Westwood, where he grew up, a neighborhood dense with Iranian shops and restaurants.
SHAHEEN FERDOWSI: There's a reason why it's called Tehrangeles. The heartbeat of the Persian diaspora is in Los Angeles.
RAINEY: Ferdowsi has hosted events to bring Iranians together during this challenging year to connect over their shared culture and get away from polarized online environments. Now he's planning on hosting watch parties.
FERDOWSI: Not only am I excited that the Iran national team is coming to play here because they're going to have so much fan support, but I'm also excited to have all of the Iranians from the rest of North America and probably Europe, right?
RAINEY: Still, Iranians in LA will be gathering in a moment of uncertainty. Sheila Rossi, who was born in Iran and is now the mayor of the small city of South Pasadena, says she'll probably be watching the matches. But her mind is on the continuing war.
SHEILA ROSSI: It's still very, like, tenuous right now. We're not sure what's going to happen.
RAINEY: She's worried about her family still in Iran.
For NPR News, I'm Libby Rainey in Los Angeles.
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