Iran World Cup match in Los Angeles prompts protest, lawsuit

INGLEWOOD – A protest was held near SoFi Stadium Monday, hours before Iran was to begin play in the 2026 World Cup against New Zealand, in an effort to “again educate the public and policy makers about the nature of the Iran regime.”

“We are here because … the Iranian regime is torturing, executing political prisoners and athletes as we speak and we tell the world that FIFA should hold Iranian regime accountable,” Nasser Sharif, the president of the California Society for Democracy in Iran, told City News Service in a telephone interview from outside the Intuit Dome, adjacent to SoFi Stadium.

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Iran players walk onto the pitch at the stadium one day before their FIFA World Cup match against New Zealand in Inglewood, Calif., near Los Angeles, Sunday, June 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Andre Penner)

Sharif said he is hoping to educate the public about the need for Iran to become a democratic republic.

The society is a volunteer-based organization with many members who were political prisoners “or they lost their family members to the brutality of the Iranian regime,” Sharif said.

People protest outside Los Angeles Stadium before the World Cup Group G soccer match between Iran and New Zealand in Inglewood, Calif., near Los Angeles, Monday, June 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

The group held a similar protest Sunday outside the Intuit Dome calling for Iran to be expelled from FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, because the Football Federation Islamic Republic of Iran is controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which was designated by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist organization in 2019.

Small protests were also held Sunday outside the team’s Manhattan Beach hotel and Dignity Health Sports Park in Carson, where it practiced.

Protesters have said they plan to carry Iran’s pre-revolution “Lion and Sun” flag during Monday’s protest. FIFA has banned it from being taken into the stadium because of its regulations prohibiting banners, flags, apparel or paraphernalia that are of a “political, offensive and/or discriminatory nature.”

If any of the flags are unfurled inside the stadium, the Iranian team has threatened to halt the match.

“We don’t care if you stop the game. This is not even our team,” 22-year-old Iranian-American political science student Sara Barahman told the French news agency Agence France-Presse.

Some fans say they will wear shirts with the flag to the match.

The Greater Los Angeles area is home to the largest population of Iranian ancestry in the world outside of Iran, with estimates ranging from 375,000 people to more than 500,000.

A lawsuit was filed Wednesday in Los Angeles Superior Court seeking a temporary restraining order against FIFA from denying admission into SoFi Stadium or any other stadium to any spectator in possession of the Lion and Sun flag, confiscating the flags inside the stadium, removing spectators from the stadiums or their vicinity because of such flags.

The suit filed by Sam Kermanian and the Institute For Voices of Liberty cites the California Constitution’s protection of free speech as the reason the temporary restraining order should be granted.

Kermanian said in the suit that he has purchased tickets for Iran’s World Cup matches and intends to carry and display the flag at the matches “as a means of expressing his political views regarding freedom, democracy, secular governance and opposition to the current Iranian regime.”

Other defendants include Los Angeles County, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and the city of Inglewood.

Kermanian is a member of the Board of Directors of the institute, which describes itself as “a nonprofit, educational public policy institute dedicated to reflecting the aspirations of the people of Iran.”

The Iran vs. New Zealand match is scheduled to begin at 6 p.m. (CNS)

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