LOS ANGELES, Jan 15 (AFP) - Shahriar Afshar will be there --
along with
several busloads of Iranian Americans making the trip for the historic
football match on Sunday.
"Everybody I know is coming up for the game," said Afshar,
president of the
San Diego-based Iranian Trade Association. "It's a great
outing. Several
thousand are coming up from San Diego."
They'll be in the stands on Sunday when the Iranian national soccer team
meets the United States at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, the first game between
the two sides on US soil.
Politics overshadowed the last match the two countries played -- in the 1998
World Cup in France, when Iran beat the United States 2- 1.
Now the team is here for a series of "friendly" matches. They lost
2-1 to
Mexico in Oakland on January 9, and defeated Ecuador 2-1 here on Wednesday.
Afshar, 31, left Iran in 1979 at age 10 with his family and
came to
California, just as the country's Islamic revolution broke out and US
hostages were seized in Tehran.
Most members of southern California's 700,000-strong Iranian community have
vivid memories of that chaotic time, when lives were disrupted, families
split and Iran 's fundamentalist regime became an international pariah.
Now the two countries are moving slowly toward normalizing relations. But
the United States maintains an economic embargo, and accuses Iran of
supporting international terrorism.
Iran agreed to the trip only after the State Department and the US Soccer
Federation assured them the delegation would not have to be fingerprinted to
get visas. US immigration officials often fingerprint Iranians entering the
United States.
Most Iranians here -- and the Iranian players -- hope Sunday's meeting will
be about sport.
"We don't want the game to be seen as political," said midfielder
Mohammed
Khakpoor, who plays for the New York-New Jersey Metrostars of Major League
Soccer.
"The political issue is mostly brought up by the press," Khakpoor
told a
Tuesday news conference. "We are here to play games and be a representative
of the Iranian people."
Most local Iranians agree.
Hamid Memir, who runs the Shirin Restaurant in Woodland Hills, northwest of
Los Angeles, compares recent sporting contacts to the famous "Ping-Pong
diplomacy" that led to the opening of relations between the United States
and China.
"The US and Iran cannot ignore each other," said Memir, 46, who opposed
the
Shah's US-backed regime before leaving the country after the revolution.
"Maybe contacts starting with sports and culture is the way to go. But
it is
not the moment to open all doors," he said.
"It's not a political exchange," adds Afshar. "It's
an opportunity to take
pride in your national team."
The Iranian team welcomes the support.
"It is really wonderful to be greeted" by members of the Iranian community,
said coach Jalal Talebi. "There is a lot of warmth."
The only other top-level sporting exchanges involving visits between the two
countries since 1979 have been wrestling competitions.
Sunday's game will be televised by the ESPN cable sports channel in the
United States, and Iranian television.
Talebi joked when asked last week by a reporter about the political
implications of the game.
"You mean against Ecuador?" he said with a smile.
But while Bijan Khalili will be glad to see the two sides play on Sunday, he
hopes the larger political issues -- including human rights in Iran and
Tehran's support for terrorism -- won't be forgotten.
Khalili, 48, was a civil engineer in Iran before fleeing here after the 1979
revolution. Now he works for Iran Shahr, a weekly Pharsi-language newspaper
based in Los Angeles.
"It is a political game," he said. "It is not a problem that
they have
organized the game, but we have to speak up against things that are still
going on in Iran ."
Most in the community will be cheering for the Iranians on Sunday. But Memir
-- who will also be in the stands -- won't commit himself.
"I am a fan of soccer," he said. "I love to see good a game."
"If both sides show good football, it doesn't matter who wins."
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