Iran – Nouvelle-zélande: Tehrangehlaches turns Monday match into test
Iran – Nouvelle-zélande opens Monday in Los Angeles with the Iranian team’s first World Cup match landing in Westwood, where the city’s largest Iranian diaspora lives. The game arrives in Tehrangeles as soccer and politics remain difficult to separate for many in the neighborhood.
Westwood and Tehrangeles
Los Angeles is home to 300,000 Iranians, and most settled there after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Westwood, nicknamed Tehrangeles, has an especially important Iranian community, and some residents openly support the deposed shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi while others display the pre-revolutionary flag with a lion and a sun.
That mix is why Monday’s match is carrying political weight beyond the field. Iran is playing on American soil, in a district where the diaspora includes people who want the Islamic regime gone and others who reject outside intervention as a path to change.
Bita Tahmasbi in Westwood
Bita Tahmasbi, a 31-year-old Iranian-American, said she was torn by the moment. “Honnêtement, je ne sais pas trop quoi en penser.”
She added, “Comme plusieurs, j’espérais voir les Iraniens vivre en liberté et jouir de leurs droits fondamentaux, mais, en même temps, je sais que les interventions [militaires] américaines ne se soldent malheureusement jamais par une amélioration.” Tahmasbi was born in the United States and used to visit Tehran regularly before the war began.
Her view tracks with a broader split in the neighborhood after the announcement of a peace agreement between Iran and the United States, which ended more than 100 days of war in the Middle East. Some opponents of the Islamic regime welcomed the deal with mixed feelings rather than relief.
Robert and the MIGA cap
Robert, an Iranian-American opponent of the Islamic regime, argued that the overthrow has to come from inside Iran but cannot happen without foreign help. He said, “Le régime iranien doit disparaître, mais, en même temps, je ne veux pas de gens innocents tués dans la guerre.”
He wears a cap reading “MIGA,” short for “Make Iran Great Again,” and bought it hoping to wear it Monday night for Iran’s first World Cup match. In Westwood, that moment will draw a diaspora that is divided not just over soccer, but over what should come after the final whistle.
