Threatened legal action over pre-1979 Iranian flag at FIFA World Cup shows the messiness of trying to keep politics out of sports
Published about 7 hours ago • 7 min read
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Non-profit group threatens FIFA with legal action over reported plan to ban pre-1979 Iranian flag
The pre-1979 Iranian "Lion and Sun" flag. (Wikipedia.)
There's a long and mostly unsuccessful history of people and organizations trying to keep sports completely separate from politics. That's especially true at international competitions, such as the upcoming men's FIFA World Cup. That tournament's already under particular scrutiny around the participation of Iran, which is set to play matches in the U.S. despite the American and Israeli attack on the country earlier this year and the ongoing conflict that's spawned. And there's an interesting new dimension there, with reports of FIFA planning to exclude the pre-1979 Iranian flag from stadiums now leading to a threatened lawsuit by a U.S.-based non-profit organization.
The flag in question here was first adopted in 1905 as part of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution. It bears the same tricolor design and colors (horizontal stripes of green, white, and red) as the current Iranian flag, but has a gold lion and sun in the center. Following the 1979 Islamic revolution, the lion and sun was initially replaced with just a sun with 22 stars (representing the 22nd day of Bahman, when the revolution claimed victory), then replaced with the current four crescents and a sword in June 1980. But many groups opposed to the current Iranian government have used the pre-1979 flag as a symbol, and that's led to some prohibitions on it, including some fans with that flag (or images of it on shirts) being prohibited from entering stadiums at the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar. And, as per a report from Adam Crafton and Christopher Kamrani of The Athletic last week, FIFA is set to escalate that into a full event-wide ban of that flag at this summer's World Cup. But as Crafton wrote in a follow-up piece Monday, the U.S.-based non-profit organization The Institute for Voices of Liberty is now threatening FIFA with legal action over this:
The Institute for Voices of Liberty has sent a letter expressing concerns to FIFA, via its legal counsel Shahrokh Mokhtarzadeh, who told The Athletic via email that, dependant on FIFA’s response, or non-response, “a decision will be made to commence formal proceedings in Superior Court, State of California or Federal Courts in California on a later date.”
The legal counsel for the group told The Athletic on Saturday afternoon that they had not received any response from FIFA, as of three days after sending the letter to soccer’s governing body. They added: “We are preparing to commence appropriate legal proceedings in case of attempts by FIFA to exclude the Lion and Sun flag.”
"Preparing to commence" sounds like something that would be uttered by a Grand Moff preparing to fire the Death Star (or by Dr. Doofenshmirtz as he powered up an inator), but this is worth paying some attention to. Of course, to do so, it's worth looking at who's behind this. The Beverly Hills-based institute here makes it clear they're opposed to the current Iranian government, with their homepage featuring "Imagine. A Free Iran," and their mission statement is much more reflective of their opposition to that government than of any particular plans to replace it*:
The Institute for Voices of Liberty is a non-partisan organization. We are composed of Republicans, Democrats, those who advocate a constitutional monarchy as well as those who advocate a republic in Iran. We are women, men and members of the LGBT community. We are old and young, conservative and liberal. What unites us is our deep commitment to seeing that the realities of Iran are reflected honestly and understood accurately. We support all and favor none. We have neither sought nor received financial support from any government. As a diverse group of professionals dedicated to reflecting the voices of freedom seeking people of Iran, we define “freedom seeking people of Iran” as those who reject the entirety of the institution of Islamic Republic in Iran, its constitution and affiliated entities.
As Crafton notes, the institute's advisory council has some notable names, including prominent law professor Alan Dershowitz, former Mike Pence advisor Joshua Charles, and former Jimmy Carter advisor Stuart E. Eizenstat. So they seem likely to have the funds and the legal expertise to at least somewhat pursue this if they want to (although it should be stated that history shows us there are many more threats of litigation than actual litigation). And if they do launch a legal challenge that gets some level of reception from a court, that might create some interesting complications indeed, and might spark wider conversations (and perhaps even rulings and precedents) about just what symbols sports organizations and venues can and cannot ban.
That's perhaps the most interesting part of this. Crafton and Kamrani wrote last week that FIFA responded to an Athletic formal request on if the flag would be banned by sending a list of prohibited items from its stadium code of conduct, including "Any materials, including but not limited to banners, flags, fliers, apparel and other paraphernalia, that are of a political, offensive and/or discriminatory nature, containing wording, symbols or any other attributes aimed at discrimination of any kind against a country, private person or group on account of race, skin colour, ethnicity, national or social origin, gender identity and expression, disability, language, religion, political opinion or any other opinion, birth, wealth or any other status, sexual orientation or on any other grounds." And while there's some merit to such a wide-ranging code in theory, just about any symbol could be declared to be "political, offensive, and/or discriminatory," so it comes down to interpretation (and who's providing that interpretation).
Along those lines, Crafton and Kamrani wrote that FIFA does intend to allow the Palestine flag in stadiums. "The difference between this and the pre-revolutionary Iran flag, from a FIFA perspective, is that the Palestine national flag is the officially approved flag of a member association of FIFA, and therefore it should only be removed from fans in the event it is deemed to represent a very serious security risk." And yes, there's some logic to saying "official FIFA member association flags are allowed, others are banned," but it will be real interesting to see how exactly that gets enforced.
As mentioned, just about everything is political in one way or another. One symbol with political connotations that it's highly unlikely FIFA will take action against is "Don't Tread On Me." That's an American Revolution-era slogan that's been heavily embraced by the U.S. men's and women's soccer teams (even on jerseys at one point) and many of their supporters, but it started as the Gadsden flag created for an armed rebellion against England, and it's been adopted by many right-wing and libertarian political movements, including the Tea Party. Don't expect to see FIFA prohibiting all variants of that that from their stadiums, though. (Another former flag that carries massive political connotations and might actually get prohibited if anyone did try to bring it is the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia battle flag, which NASCAR officially banned in 2020. But trying to come up with a coherent overall policy that bans some flags and not others is incredibly difficult, and that's why these bans tend to come down to either case-by-case interpretation or an overarching ban of a specific flag.
The overall takeaway here is that it's absolutely impossible to keep politics out of sports. That's been the case for centuries, including such elements as debates over racial segregation in sports and beyond** and international boycotts. And it becomes even more the case at specifically international events such as the Olympics and the FIFA World Cup***; the participating countries not only often have plenty of controversial history with each other, they also sometimes even have ongoing problems, whether armed conflicts such as Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the U.S. attack on Iran or less-physical disputes such as U.S. claims about trying to annex Canada and/or Greenland. Thus, carrying even just an approved flag is absolutely a political statement.
Yes, carrying a former flag like the pre-1979 Iranian one is perhaps even more of a blatant political statement. And it's possible to see what FIFA might be thinking in trying to ban that from stadiums. But that is a specific exclusion of a very specific political statement, and they certainly won't be applying their "no politics" stadium code as broadly as it could potentially be read in all cases (or else they would wind up with a whole lot of excluded fans and controversies). And it looks like trying for this particular exclusion may lead to at least some negative publicity for them, especially if a court action does get filed. How much impact an actual court action will have at this late date remains to be seen, especially against an international body like FIFA that specifically gets to control all these venues**** as part of their World Cup agreements. But this one will be worth watching, as it certainly could lead to some interesting stories and protests at the least.
*The idea of multiple regime-opposed forces with dramatically different ideologies working together for regime change without agreement on what was to follow was actually key to the 1979 revolution. For more on that, check out Dan Bullock's 1979: Revolution in Iran, and his 2022 conversation with Liz Davidson about that game and more. **A worthwhile read on the sports-and-segregation front from earlier this month is Joe Posnanski's piece (for paid subscribers) on the death of Peter Norman, the Australian sprinter who supported John Carlos and Tommie Smith's 1968 Olympic raised-fist salute and got ostracized for it.
***Someone recently made the claim that media shouldn't use "FIFA World Cup" because it promotes the organization. From this corner, the usage is to indicate that we're talking about soccer World Cups, not the World Cup that tends to be the top non-Olympic competition in most Olympic sports. FIFA doesn't get to completely own the "World Cup" term overall; their versions should be tied to their organization, in my mind.
****The amount of control given to FIFA to host events has long been problematic in its own rights, and leads to a lot of other dumb things, such as the unnecessary eviction of the B.C. Sports Hall of Fame discussed here recently.
