At the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, I was approached by soldiers holding assault rifles outside the stadium before Iran’s football match against Argentina. My crime? Holding the Iranian Lion and Sun flag. At this summer’s World Cup in North America, football fans who dare wave Iran’s pre-revolutionary flag will again find themselves in trouble. Fifa plans to prohibit the presence of the pre-revolutionary flag inside stadiums. The oafish president of football’s governing body Gianni Infantino clearly needs a history lesson.
The tentacles of the Iranian regime spread far and wide across the globe
The Lion and Sun is one of the oldest symbols in Iranian civilisation, a symbol that can be traced back three millennia. The lion represents power and courage, while the sun is a symbol of light, knowledge, divinity and cosmic order. For 3,000 years, it has been a hallmark of Iranian identity. Today, it represents a pre-theocratic, secular Iran, not a political logo linked to any leader or government. It is one of the oldest continuously used national signs still recognised today, a civilisational motif representing a set of values; ones of tolerance, harmony and enlightenment. The Lion and Sun is simply Iranian. Nothing more. Nothing less. And that is why Iran’s Islamic leaders detest it.
Outside that game in Brazil, hiding behind the armed soldiers, were members of the Iranian regime. They are easy to spot: they have unkempt facial hair (a symbol of loyalty to their Islamic masters); they speak Persian, and no English; and they look more south Asian than Iranian. Resentment, envy, hatred and anger courses through every part of their faces. They are there to keep watch for their Tehran paymasters.
Many members of the Iranian regime’s delegation, including the head of the Iranian FA, are still waiting on US visas ahead of the upcoming World Cup. But the tentacles of the Iranian regime spread far and wide across the globe. Some of their freeloading supporters, spotters and sycophants will no doubt already be living in the United States. Undoubtedly, as in previous World Cups, they will be on location at the games this summer, with their cameras and binoculars identifying and filming Iranians who demand the liberation of their country and their people.
At the Iran-USA game during the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, we were physically attacked by stewards and a group of regime supporters for carrying the Lion and Sun flag. Female friends of mine wearing Woman, Life, Freedom T-shirts were roughly searched by stadium security guards.
This Iranian football fan won’t be put off: I’ll be carrying my Lion and Sun flag to Iran’s opening game – and intend to wave it proudly. To ban the Lion and Sun flag is not to prevent a political symbol from being displayed; it is to deny a long-suffering, and once-again, abandoned people their rights; it is to hide their identity and to silence their voice. Instead of handing out gimmicks such as the Fifa Peace Prize to US president Donald Trump, Fifa should stick to the day job – and allow fans to get on with supporting their team, using whatever flag they wish.
It remains to be seen whether US authorities will actually enforce the ban on Iran’s flag. Clearly, in Brazil, Russia and Qatar, where the last three World Cups were hosted, fans had no choice but to comply with the authorities. After all, you did not want to risk not being allowed in the stadium to watch a team that was yours or, worse, get arrested in a country with zero human rights. America is the land of the free, so it should ignore Fifa – and ensure the Lion and Sun flag isn’t confiscated by stewards, or snatched out of the hands of ordinary Iranian fans by the regime’s goons.
At the World Cup in a few weeks, Iranians will not be watching their team, they will be watching the team of their mortal enemy, the Islamic Republic, in a country that takes human rights seriously (to some extent). There will be Iranians, inside and outside the stadia in Los Angeles and Seattle in June, who have lived in forced exile from their motherland for decades. Many of those people will be standing shoulder to shoulder willing to risk arrest, or even give their lives for the Lion and Sun flag and what it represents – not politics, but freedom. I, for one, will be standing with them.
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