Iran wants U.S. out of World Cup for doctoring Iranian flag in social media posts
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – The head of Iran’s Football Federation Ali Kafashat told reporters on Monday that the U.S. should leave the World Cup for taking part in spreading hate towards Iran.
The Football Federation of Iran (FFI) has asked the U.S. to refrain from spreading hate against the Islamic Republic and should leave the World Cup for taking part in spreading anti-Iran propaganda and misleading the audience.
“We have made this demand on the basis of the facts,” Kafashat said, as quoted by PressTV.
Also on Monday, FFI President Masoud Shojaei said that the U.S. should leave the World Cup if it wants to prove its sincerity.
He said, “We are waiting for the U.S. and Europe to prove their sincerity and support of our revolution,” adding that a few of the European and U.S. media outlets in Iran are “using the same tactics” to spread anti-Iran propaganda.
Shojaei said that the U.S. has been trying to spread anti-Iran propaganda in countries like Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen.
Meanwhile, the Iranian parliament, the Majlis, passed a bill last week banning hate speech, particularly targeting minorities and women, following the case of Qassem Suleimani, the commander of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps that fights alongside Iran’s elite forces.
Suleimani was killed in an air strike by the U.S. on a target that was not connected to the U.S. operations in Iraq, and Washington has been trying to make the killing of the general look like an act of war.
Last week, a U.S. pastor was arrested in Iran after he criticized Suleimani, and U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) wrote to Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs asking that Suleimani’s name and the death of a member of the Revolutionary Guards be removed from the State Department’s list of terrorist leaders.
The State Department put Suleimani on the list