Three unnamed US officials confirmed on Friday 5 June that the US Embassy in Ankara issued visas to Iran's World Cup squad, covering players, coaches and what the government called "necessary support staff"1. US Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack credited the Ankara embassy for the processing. The approval reverses the picture from a day earlier, when the squad had boarded an Antalya flight bound for Tijuana without those visas in hand.
FFIRI president Mehdi Taj said every passport had been submitted to Ankara on FIFA's instruction, adding that his assessment was that all visas would be issued in full2. FFIRI is the Football Federation of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the body managing the squad's travel. The clearance arrives after Mexico granted its own visas on 2 June while the US file stayed open, with striker Mehdi Taremi's 2010-2012 service in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps named as the bar.
Waiver authority over that bar, Section 212(a)(3)(B) of US immigration law, sits with the Secretary of State rather than with consular officers. Barrack crediting the embassy reads as a political processing decision, not a legal clearance of the IRGC question. That distinction is why squad-level approval can stand while individual files remain open, and why the team still faces the harder problem the visas do not solve: a Tijuana base requiring three separate US border crossings during the group stage.
