Featured Image Credit: Saul Loeb
Topics: Donald Trump, Football, Iran
Phoebe Tonks
Donald Trump has issued a stark warning to the Iranian National Soccer Team ahead of the upcoming FIFA World Cup, as he claimed that while they were welcome to attend, he didn’t think it was ‘appropriate.’
Using their ‘safety’ as a shield to defend his comments, Trump said on Truth Social.: “The Iran National Soccer Team is welcome to The World Cup, but I really don’t believe it is appropriate that they be there, for their own life and safety.”
This prompted an equally firm response from the team on Instagram, who argued that the host nation’s inability to provide safety for competing athletes was the root cause of the problem, not whether they should attend or not.
"The World Cup is a historic and international event and its governing body is FIFA - not any individual, country," the team's statement reads. "Iran's national team, with strength and a series of decisive victories achieved by the brave sons of Iran, was among the first teams to qualify for this major tournament."
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"Certainly, no one can exclude Iran's national team from the World Cup; the only country that could be excluded is one that merely carries the title of 'host' yet lacks the ability to provide security for the teams participating in this global event," the statement continued.
Trump’s less-than-subtle attempt to encourage the Iranian team to sit out the global sporting competition, comes as the US remains locked in conflict with Iran, and falls just three months after the President was awarded the FIFA Peace Prize for his ‘efforts to end wars’, rather than start them.
Back in December 2025, Trump scooped up the unusual honour, the first of it’s kind, at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C - two months after he had missed out on a Nobel Peace Prize.
Although the award stands in its own right, many believe it was an attempt to pacify the President’s frustration as a consolation prize for losing out on the award he had publicly been trying to secure for much of his second term.
Andrew Giuliani, the executive director of Trump's White House Task Force on the 2026 World Cup, said in a statement at the time, "The president is the consummate host."
"Is there any other president that can handle inviting the world in and being a better host than Donald J. Trump?,” Giuliani continued.
“You definitely deserve the first FIFA Peace Prize for your action, for what you have obtained in your way, but you obtained it in an incredible way,” FIFA President Gianni Infantino added. “And you can always count, Mr. President, on my support, on the support of the entire … soccer community to help you make peace and make the world prosper.”
Whether peace appears to be on the agenda remains open to debate, but so far the President has given no indication that he intends to stop the ongoing conflict in Iran, despite insisting that he had already ‘defeated’ the country.
More than 1,800 people have been killed so far since the war started of February 28, including at least 175 students that were killed following a U.S.-led attack on an Iranian elementary school, per the Council on Foreign Relations.
Prior to his comments about the Iranian team’s ‘safety’ on Thursday, Trump had previously told reporters that he ‘didn’t care’ if they participated in the World Cup or not.
“I really don’t care,” the president said. “I think Iran is a very badly defeated country. They’re running on fumes.”