UNITED STATES PERSPECTIVE

Washington, June 7. CBS News is the only major U.S. outlet that precisely documents the rupture between the diplomatic triumph announced Friday and the debacle of Saturday. On Friday, June 5, U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack announced on X that "the visas necessary for Iran's participation in the World Cup, including for athletes and necessary support staff, have been issued." The tone is diplomatic, almost warm: "Sport transcends borders." On Saturday June 6, the Iranian Federation denounced that 14 administrative and technical officials had not received their visas, among them Secretary General Hedayat Mombeini and Vice President Mehdi Mohammad Nabi. CBS confirms the status of Federation president Mehdi Taj — a former Revolutionary Guards commander — remains unclear. An unnamed American official then spoke on cable: "We will not allow the Iranian team to abuse this system to sneak terrorists into the United States under false pretenses." The formula, quoted in Le Temps (Switzerland) and RFI, is unusually direct and signals that the State Department applies an explicit anti-IRGC filter: Marco Rubio had announced in April that the Iranian delegation could not include people "linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards." The American angle is therefore double: displayed generosity toward the players (they will play in Los Angeles on June 15), assumed firmness toward the staff. CBS recalls that this is the first World Cup in history where the host country receives the team of a country with which it is at war. The American press does not turn this into a drama — it logs it as one diplomatic detail among others on the same day as the Hormuz, Bahrain and Kuwait strikes.