In brief:
- The US is happy for Iran to play in the World Cup in June.
- A Donald Trump envoy has suggested Italy replace Iran in the tournament.
US secretary of state Marco Rubio says Washington has no objections to Iranian players participating in the 2026 FIFA World Cup, but he added the players will not be allowed to bring with them people with ties to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
"Nothing from the US has told them they can't come," Rubio told reporters overnight.
US President Donald Trump also said his administration "would not want to affect the athletes" in comments he made at the White House.
The 2026 World Cup is set to begin on 11 June across the United States, Mexico and Canada.
"The problem with Iran would be not their athletes. It would be some of the other people they would want to bring with them, some of whom have ties to the IRGC. We may not be able to let them in, but not the athletes themselves," Rubio said.
"They can't bring a bunch of IRGC terrorists into our country and pretend that they are journalists and athletic trainers," Rubio added. Washington has designated the IRGC as a "foreign terrorist organisation."
Currently there is no suggestion Iran will withdraw or be banned from the tournament. A Truth Social post from Trump in mid-March read: "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."
After the start of the war in the Middle East, Iran asked that FIFA move the team's three group matches from the US to Mexico, which was rejected.
Paolo Zampolli, a Trump envoy who has no official connection with the World Cup, had suggested on Thursday that Italy, which missed a third straight World Cup after it lost a European playoff to Bosnia and Herzegovina in March, should replace Iran at the tournament.
'Not possible'
Italy's sports minister Andrea Abodi said on Thursday that a reinstatement of Italy "first, is not possible; second, is not appropriate, you qualify on the pitch", according to Italian news agencies ANSA and AGI.
That view was echoed by the president of Italy's Olympic committee, Luciano Buonfiglio.
"I would feel offended. You have to earn your place in the World Cup," he said.
The Iranian embassy to Rome responded by saying that the suggestion showed US "moral bankruptcy" and that Italy did not need "political privileges" to demonstrate its football greatness.
Italy is a four-time World Cup champion.
Iran's participation at the World Cup has been thrown into doubt by the war with the US and Israel that broke out on 28 February.
The Iranian football federation (FFIRI) had said in April it was "negotiating" with FIFA to relocate the country's World Cup matches from the United States to Mexico.
But FIFA president Gianni Infantino told the Agence France-Presse news agency last month that Iran will be at the World Cup and that they will play "where they are supposed to be, according to the draw".
In 2022, Zampolli made a similar suggestion, proposing to FIFA that Italy should replace Iran at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar because of the Islamic Republic's crackdown on protesters at that time. His proposal fell on deaf ears.
Zampolli is an Italian-American socialite, businessman and founder of a modelling agency, who claims to have introduced Trump to his current wife Melania Trump.
— With reporting from Agence-France Presse.
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