Westwood, one of the most affluent neighborhoods on the Westside of Los Angeles, has long served as the symbolic capital of the Iranian diaspora. Restaurants advertise kebabs and saffron rice in Farsi, and a conversation started here often ends somewhere in Tehran. Yet on the evening of June 15, when Iran opened its World Cup campaign against New Zealand, the neighborhood that locals have nicknamed Tehrangeles felt strangely subdued. There were no crowds in jerseys. No spontaneous gatherings. Myself and an Iranian American friend, Adlee Efraim, moved from one restaurant to another, guided by social media posts suggesting who might be showing the match. The first bar was closed. The second decided not to show it. The manager at a third location shrugged.
How is it possible that we couldn’t find the game in Los Angeles, home to the largest Iranian community outside Iran? Why did Tehrangeles seem emptier than expected on the night Iran began its World Cup? “I called six Iranian friends looking for a place to watch,” says Adlee. “They’re all at the stadium.” Eventually, we found Javan Restaurant on Santa Monica Boulevard.
Inside, around 30 people watched the match while eating kebabs and drinking tea. Families dominated the room. A few supporters had painted their faces in the colors of the national team. When Ramin Rezaeian scored for Iran in the 44th minute, the restaurant erupted. Eli, one of the waitresses, paused to watch a replay. “I came from Iran five years ago,” she said. “Of course, I support the team. Today isn’t political. I’ve supported the national team since I was a child.” For others, separating the team from politics is less straightforward. Most people here fled the Islamic Republic or have relatives who did. Some arrived after persecution, imprisonment or years of uncertainty. For many, Team Melli (National Team) remains entangled with the government that claims to represent it. “My husband didn’t want to come tonight,” Fahrideh tells me, pointing toward the elegantly dressed man sitting beside her. “I convinced him.” Then she raises a question that has been bothering her all evening. “Did you notice how few Iranian supporters they showed on television?” “Today isn’t political. I’ve supported the national team since I was a child.” The question lingers because it is true. Broadcast cameras largely avoided what was happening in the stands. At kickoff, sections of Iranian supporters booed the anthem associated with the Islamic Republic. Hundreds waved the Lion and Sun flag, the emblem of prerevolutionary Iran and a symbol despised by the regime in Tehran. FIFA, invoking its commitment to political neutrality, has sought to limit the flag’s visibility inside the stadium.
For Roozbeh Farahanipour, an Iranian American businessman and longtime opposition activist, the decision is absurd. “We are in America,” he says. “The First Amendment protects freedom of expression. People can enter the stadium carrying a rainbow flag or a MAGA flag. Why not the Lion and Sun flag?” Farahanipour did not attend the match. In fact, he chose not to watch it. “I self-boycott,” he tells me. “I don’t want to give FIFA my money. And I don’t want to torture myself by listening to that anthem.” His criticism extended beyond the Iranian regime. Like many Iranian Americans, he believes FIFA helped create the tensions surrounding Iran’s participation. Because several members of Iran’s delegation are suspected by U.S. authorities of ties to the Revolutionary Guard Corps, visas were heavily restricted. The team was based in Mexico and allowed into the United States only under tight conditions. Supporters faced their own obstacles. “The players paid the price,” Farahanipour says. “They couldn’t prepare like everyone else. Their supporters couldn’t travel. None of that was fair.”
Outside SoFi Stadium, several hundred demonstrators gathered to denounce the regime. Some booed the players. Others waved monarchist flags. At one point, protesters briefly blocked the Iranian team bus. If football reveals anything here, it is the depth of the divisions running through the diaspora itself.
Nasrin Rahimieh, a scholar of the Iranian diaspora and professor of comparative literature at the University of California, Irvine, believes many observers misunderstand what is happening within the community. “Everyone is against the Islamic Republic,” she says. “That is not the real divide.” The real divide, she argues, has emerged around the recent military campaign against Iran by Israel and the United States.
“Today the fracture runs between those who support war and those who oppose it,” she says. “I’ve lost friends because of that.” Rahimieh knows the dynamics firsthand. She recalls being accused of supporting the regime after defending the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran negotiated under President Barack Obama. Other academics, particularly women, were subjected to similar attacks. “It became a way of discrediting people,” she says.
She also worries about how Iranians are increasingly perceived in the United States. “There is this assumption that 90 million Iranians somehow support the regime. It’s a profoundly dehumanizing way of looking at people,” she says. “The lack of hospitality has been shameful,” she continues. “Not only toward Iranians, but toward supporters in general. FIFA has not done enough to defend the values it claims to represent.” “Today the fracture runs between those who support war and those who oppose it.” The contradiction sits at the heart of this World Cup. FIFA insists that football exists above politics, yet politics has shaped almost every aspect of Iran’s presence in Los Angeles: the visas, the travel restrictions, the arguments over flags, the demonstrations outside the stadium and even the calculations ordinary supporters make before deciding whether to attend a match. Rahimieh also offers a possible explanation for the strange quietness of Tehrangeles that evening. Some Iranian Americans, she believes, may be reluctant to publicly support the national team for fear of how that support might be interpreted by fellow exiles. In a community deeply divided over the regime, the war and the future of Iran, even wearing a Team Melli jersey can become politically charged.
Rahimieh notes that many Iranians increasingly feel that they are viewed with suspicion in the United States. Even after local authorities announced that immigration enforcement agents would not be present around the stadium, anxiety remained palpable among some supporters. Perhaps that helps explain why Tehrangeles felt so quiet. Some people feared how they would be judged by other Iranians. Others worried about how they might be perceived simply for being Iranian. In that climate, staying home can feel easier than stepping into the public eye.
At Javan Restaurant, conversations drifted throughout the evening from football to politics and back again. The Islamic Republic. Trump . FIFA. War. Monarchists. Visas. Deportations. Every discussion eventually circles back to the same question: What, exactly, does it mean to support Iran today? Then, late in the game, Mehdi Ghayedi scored the team’s second goal. For a moment, the arguments disappeared. People rose from their seats. They clapped, shouted and smiled despite themselves. This included those who despise the regime and no longer support the national team. For a few fleeting seconds, Iran existed separately from those who govern it. A tense exchange broke out at one point between Fahrideh and Adlee, the Iranian American friend of Jewish origin accompanying me. The conversation moved too quickly between English and Farsi to follow every detail, but the disagreement was unmistakable. Fahrideh suggested that Iranian Jews have placed the interests of their families above those of Iran itself. Adlee pushed back immediately. A few minutes later, the match resumed and the discussion dissolved into the general noise of the restaurant. Yet it lingers in the mind long after the final whistle.
What the World Cup reveals is not simply a divided diaspora, but a community confronting questions for which opposition to the Islamic Republic is no longer a sufficient answer. For decades, exile provided a common language. Today, the disagreements begin where that consensus ends.
The fault lines are numerous. Some place their hopes in Reza Pahlavi, the son of the last shah. Others see any return to monarchy as another dead end. Some view the war as an opportunity to weaken a regime they despise. Others fear it will only deepen the suffering of ordinary Iranians. Accusations of being a regime sympathizer, a lobbyist or even a spy circulate with remarkable ease. The atmosphere can become so charged that people retreat from public debate altogether. Many Iranians increasingly feel that they are viewed with suspicion in the United States. The divide is also shaped by time. Some still speak of Iran in the present tense, as a country to which they remain bound despite everything. Others increasingly think of themselves as Iranian Americans. Roozbeh Farahanipour belongs to the latter category. A former opposition figure who arrived in the United States as a political refugee, he waited nearly two decades before becoming an American citizen. The decision came, he says, while walking through a cemetery near his new home. Realizing that this was where he wanted to be buried, he understood that America — not Iran — had become home. For others, the relationship to Iran becomes less visible. In a political climate marked by suspicion and renewed hostility toward Iranians, some prefer not to advertise their origins at all. Yet as the tournament progresses, and as Iran’s players endure visa restrictions, exhausting journeys from their base in Tijuana, and what coach Amir Ghalenoei repeatedly describes as unequal treatment, support for the team seems to grow rather than diminish. Following the scoreless draw against Belgium on June 21, Iranian flags appeared more openly across Los Angeles. At the crowded Original Farmers Market on Fairfax Avenue, supporters wear Team Melli jerseys, chant, smile and celebrate a result few had expected. The team has not won, but it has earned respect.
For many in the diaspora, the players embody something distinct from the Islamic Republic itself: resilience in the face of adversity. Before leaving Los Angeles, the team left a handwritten message in the dressing room that said, “We came to Los Angeles with pride, competed with honor, and leave with dignity.” Beneath it, another sentence: “May peace, respect, and friendship prevail among all nations.”
The debates surrounding Iran, the war and the country’s future will continue long after the tournament ends. But for a few days in Los Angeles, a team that arrives burdened by politics nevertheless succeeded at becoming something simpler: a source of pride.
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