A Kick-Start for Diplomacy

When the Iranian soccer team takes on the United States at the Rose Bowl this afternoon, the game will not only rivet the attention of the biggest Iranian community outside Iran, it will be seen as another step in a form of sports diplomacy that is drawing the people, if not the governments, of the two countries closer.

It is fitting that the game should be played in Southern California, home of hundreds of thousands of Iranians who settled here in two immigration waves since the Islamic Revolution of the late 1970s. It’s also fitting that this is an amicable nontournament match, intended to build goodwill and team familiarity.

As rare American visitors to Tehran recount, the friendly attitude of the Iranian people toward Americans contrasts sharply with the frosty official ties. A previous Iran-U.S. soccer match in Paris was mostly a love-fest. In other venues, think of last year’s gleeful Cuban-American baseball matchups or the granddaddy of sports diplomacy, the Chinese-American table tennis matches in 1971.

In Pasadena today, the division will be between Iranian Americans like Elham Montazeri, a 29-year-old Tehran native who will root for the U.S. team, and earlier generations, likely to be siding with the Iranian players. May the better team win.