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The president of the Iranian Football Federation, Mehdi Taj, said on Sunday that the Iranian football team has been granted permission to enter the United States for the World Cup, but only a day before the match, according to semi-official Iranian media.
"We don't know how far the Americans' obstructionism will continue. What the United States is doing reflects malice and a lack of equality between the teams ," the Iranian Students' News Agency (ISNA) quoted Taj as saying.
Iran will face New Zealand in Los Angeles on June 15, Belgium in Los Angeles on June 21 and Egypt in Seattle on June 26, according to FIFA.
Iran's Fars news agency reported that the team arrived in Mexico on Sunday. Last month, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said the Iranian team would stay in Mexico between matches.
A spokesman for the football federation said on Saturday that the team will travel to the US using a multiple-entry visa, entering one day before the first match and two days before each of the next two matches, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported.
A US administration official told CNN that the necessary visas for Iran to compete in the World Cup have been issued, including visas for athletes and necessary support staff.
" We will not allow the Iranian team to abuse this system to smuggle terrorists into the United States under false pretenses," the official said.
Taj said it was "really strange" that Washington was interfering in the administration of the sporting event, adding that the Iranian football federation would complain to FIFA.
The federation president also speculated that the US could try to interfere with the team's entry into the country, while appearing to link Washington's decision-making to the Iran war.
" We don't know what kind of chaos they can create at the airport. They were defeated in some areas by the people's resistance and now they are trying to make up for these defeats and express their frustrations on the football field ," ISNA quoted Taj as saying.
Meanwhile, the Iranian Embassy in Ankara called the US's "hostility" towards the Iranian team the worst possible form of political interference in sports.
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