FIFA World Cup fans sent a message to Washington on Iran

Two games were being played at Los Angeles Stadium on June 15. The first was the Islamic Republic’s World Cup match against New Zealand, its first of the tournament. The second was being played outside, where the Iranian American community organized a large anti-regime demonstration.

Many in the diaspora were not there to watch soccer. They had come to confront the regime on the only piece of American soil where they could, and to send a message to Washington.

The Memorandum of Understanding may have been signed with Iran, but the Iranian people have not signed onto it.

The protesters carried signs that said “42,000.” That is the number of Iranians reportedly killed by the Islamic Republic in January, documented by human rights organizations. They passed out T-shirts with the faces of the young men and women rounded up during the January uprisings, tried in revolutionary courts behind closed doors and executed.

I have covered this community for more than two decades. This was not protest theater. They were there to make a policy statement the only way the diaspora can.

The crowd chanted for King Reza Pahlavi. They chanted death to the Islamic Republic. They chanted “terrorist” at the regime’s representatives walking into the stadium. They flew the pre-revolutionary Lion and Sun flag the regime calls illegitimate. FIFA, at the regime’s request, had tried to ban it inside the stadium.

Iranian American advocacy organizations appealed through FIFA’s own process and lost. They went to federal court seeking a restraining order and lost again. The diaspora was told, in effect, that on US soil during an American-hosted tournament, the symbolic preferences of the Islamic Republic outweighed the First Amendment rights of Iranian Americans.

They came anyway. They brought the flags anyway. Tehran was watching. So was Washington.

Every previous US administration has negotiated with the regime while ignoring the needs, human rights and security of the Iranian people. The diaspora was telling the Trump administration not to make the same mistake.

The Iranian people are not a challenge or an afterthought. They are a constituency. And they have been a reliable anti-regime force and American ally against a terrorist government for 47 years.

The MOU is a framework, not a final deal. There is still time. The Iranian American community is asking President Donald Trump to remember who built his political leverage going into Operation Epic Fury and beyond. The policy of “maximum pressure” worked because the Iranian people made it work from the inside. The protests of 2009, 2017, 2019, 2022 and January 2026 are the reason why this regime came to the table at all.

Yet every time the regime came close to collapse, an outside power threw it a lifeline. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action was one such lifeline. The diaspora outside the stadium is telling the administration not to make the MOU the next lifeline.

President Trump may be willing to look past the transgressions of the regime in pursuit of a deal. The Iranian people are not. They are not going to forgive a system that executed their children. And they are not going to accept a peace negotiated in their name but signed without their consent.

A few things should follow from what Washington heard outside LA’s stadium.

President Trump has an opportunity here that no recent president has had. The regime is weaker than it has been since 1979. The Iranian American community is the most informed, pro-democracy advocacy bloc on this question in the country. They are asking for a policy that does not reward the regime they fled.

The Iranian people have lived under this regime for 47 years. They have buried its victims. They have watched every Western government that ever tried to negotiate with it repeat the same mistakes, convinced the next round would be different, and they have watched the regime pocket every concession and come back for more.

The diaspora outside the stadium was telling the world what it has been telling Washington for a generation. This regime was not built to compromise. It was not built to play nice. It does not deserve the deal it is being offered.

Washington should listen to the Iranian people, because they have earned the right to be heard.

Lisa Daftari is a foreign policy analyst and media commentator based in Los Angeles.

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