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Iran's World Cup campaign has been shadowed by the deep division between the Iranian people and the regime that rules them.
It's a divide that has played out through a row over a flag: not the one on the team's shirt, but the one fans keep smuggling into the stands.
When Iran kicked off their 2026 World Cup against New Zealand at SoFi Stadium on June 15, much of the noise came from outside the lines. Fans waved an unfamiliar banners in the stands, security seized others at the gates, and the official Iranian anthem was met with jeers before the team rescued a 2-2 draw.
At the centre of it all are two flags that look nothing alike: one flown by the state, the other by large parts of the diaspora. Here is what separates them, and why one has been outlawed at the World Cup.
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What is Iran's current flag?
The official flag of Iran is a horizontal tricolor of green, white and red, adopted on July 29, 1980, in the wake of the Islamic Revolution.
At its centre sits a red emblem: a stylised rendering of the word "Allah," shaped to resemble a tulip, a long-standing symbol of martyrdom in Iranian culture, formed from a sword and four crescents.
Along the inner edges of the green and red bands, the phrase "Allahu Akbar" ("God is the greatest", the recital of which is known as the takbir) is repeated 22 times in angular Kufic script. The colors are read as growth and vitality (green), peace and freedom (white), and courage and martyrdom (red).
This is the flag the Iran national team — known to supporters as Team Melli — plays under, and the one displayed on broadcasts and on FIFA's official tournament graphics.
What is Iran's old flag?
The "old" flag is the Lion and Sun, known in Persian as the Shir o Khorshid, which represented Iran for decades before 1979.
It keeps the same green, white and red bands, but in place of the Islamic emblem it carries a standing lion holding a sword, with a sun rising behind it. Under the monarchy, an imperial crown often sat above the lion, marking the rule of the Pahlavi dynasty.
Kirby Lee, Imagn Images
The Lion and Sun served as Iran's national symbol for generations, and for much of the 20th century it was the face the country showed the world. After the revolution toppled the monarchy, the new government stripped it from the flag and replaced it with the present-day emblem in 1980.
For many in the diaspora, the Lion and Sun has since become something more than a former state symbol. It is now a banner of national identity untied from the current government, and increasingly a flag of protest.
Why is Iran's pre-revolution flag banned from World Cup?
FIFA outlawed the Lion and Sun flag at 2026 World Cup venues, citing its code of conduct, which prohibits "banners, flags, fliers, apparel and other paraphernalia that are of a political, offensive and/or discriminatory nature."
Because the flag is now widely flown in opposition to the Islamic Republic, FIFA treats it as a political statement rather than a national one. A legal challenge arguing that displaying the flag is protected free speech was rejected when a Los Angeles judge upheld the ban after an emergency hearing.
That did little to stop fans. At the New Zealand match, hundreds carried Lion and Sun flags anyway. Security guards moved along the queues outside the stadium, giving supporters the choice of putting the flags away or having them confiscated, and asking some to remove T-shirts bearing the pre-revolution design. Several hundred Iranian Americans gathered outside the ground to protest against the government in Tehran, and a number got their flags into the stands regardless.
The split played out among the supporters themselves, and it was never as simple as for or against. The anthem drew jeers, but the same crowd roared every time Team Melli pushed forward. For some fans, the team is inseparable from the government that backs it, and cheering it on means cheering the state. For others, supporting the players is a way of standing with ordinary Iranians and has nothing to do with endorsing the regime or what it has done over the past years.
Many in that second group are themselves fiercely opposed to the government, yet still love Team Melli. As one fan put it, going to the game to show pride in being Iranian does not mean backing everything the players or the state stand for. The coach, Amir Ghalenoei, made a similar point after the match, noting that supporters of "different political affiliations, different beliefs" had all got behind the team. As one woman draped in a Lion and Sun flag at the gates acknowledged, the players "need to be supported by the regime, otherwise they can't play." But that, for her and many like her, did not make the team the enemy.
Iran flag change history
The flag changed because the country did. In 1979, the Islamic Revolution swept away a monarchy that traced its line back some 2,500 years, replacing the Pahlavi shah with the Islamic Republic. The Lion and Sun came down; the new emblem went up in 1980.
But the discontent that drove the revolution never fully settled, and the decades since have been punctuated by waves of unrest. Students rose up in 1999. The disputed 2009 election and the Green Movement brought millions onto the streets. From 2019, the anger turned increasingly economic, with nationwide protests over fuel prices that November. Months later, in January 2020, Iran's Revolutionary Guard shot down Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 shortly after take-off from Tehran, killing all 176 people on board, many of them Iranians. In 2022, the death in custody of Mahsa (Jina) Amini sparked the "Woman, Life, Freedom" movement, the most direct challenge yet to the state's authority and its mandatory dress codes.
The pattern continued into this year. Protests over a collapsing currency and soaring inflation spread nationwide from late December 2025, and in January the authorities imposed a near-total internet blackout as they cracked down. Rights groups say the shutdown was designed to hide the scale of the violence, with the reported death toll running into the thousands. Then, in late February, a war involving the United States and Israel spread across the region, before a ceasefire was announced on the eve of the tournament. The team reached the World Cup only after visa problems and a last-minute switch of its training base from the U.S. to Tijuana, Mexico.
Amid all this, the Lion and Sun has surged in visibility, nowhere more than in the Los Angeles area, home to the largest Iranian community outside Iran, a neighbourhood long nicknamed "Tehrangeles." For many there, the pre-revolution flag is the one they recognise as their own.
Yet the team itself remains harder to disown. For all the argument over which flag belongs to Iran, Team Melli's history stays its own, regardless of who governs in Tehran. When Iran won the AFC Asian Cup in 1976, a third straight title, and still their last, it was Team Melli who lifted it, and Team Melli they remain. That, supporters on both sides of the flag divide tend to agree, is one thing no government owns.
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