September 15, 2023
The government seems to have reversed its longtime ban on women attending soccer games, a revolutionary change if it is for real.
The president of the Iranian Football Federation, Mehdi Taj, announced the dramatic change of policy in a very routine way July 7. It was treated like a minor news story in the Iranian media presumably because the regime’s censors ordered it to be treated that way.
Taj said the decision was not made by the Football Federation, but by the Supreme National Security Council, a rather odd agency to be involved with sports questions but then this was not truly a sports issue, but an issue that goes to the heart of what the Islamic Republic is all about. It was presumably actually made by the Supreme Leader.
There were no public announcements reported from any clerics either denouncing or approving the change. Over the decades, it has been the harsh opposition of many clergymen to any integration in stadiums that has kept women out of stadiums. In 2006, President Mahmud Ahmadi-nejad ordered stadiums opened to women, but within days Supreme Leader Ali Khamenehi, presumably responding to the ire of clerics, publicly repudiated Ahmadi-nejad and ordered that the ban on women remain in place.
The Football Federation said stadiums could now admit women after they were modified to provide for a segregated female section to be reached from an entrance reserved exclusively for women, making sure that men and women cannot fraternize anywhere inside a stadium. On August 9, the stadium in Sirjan in Kerman province hosted a match with male and female spectators for the first time. Only 150 women were reported to have been admitted. News reports said the stadiums in Tabriz, Esfahan and Ahvaz are the only other ones in Iran that currently meet the federation’s standards to accept female spectators.
The Tehran Province Sports Commission said Tehran’s teams playing in Azadi Stadium, the largest in the country, would play in an empty stadium while parts of Azadi are rebuilt to accommodate women. It didn’t say how long that would take.
The commission didn’t say directly that the construction was to accommodate women. It said, “Officials recognized that the lack of infrastructure at Azadi Stadium could lead to safety concerns for the spectators. To prevent any incidents and ensure safety, competitions will be held without spectators until further notice.”
Ali Karimi, a retired soccer star and a critic of the dress code, messaged on Instagram, “No spectators will be allowed into Azadi Stadium until after the anniversary of Mahsa Amini’s death,” which is September 16. The regime has been very nervous about protests being mounted over Amini’s death, the event that has set off months of anti-regime demonstrations. The admission of women to stadiums may have proved a convenient way to keep men out of stadiums for now.
Mahyar Asgarian, head of the construction firm hired to do the upgrades at Azadi, told journalists the work would take from 16 to 19 months. IranWire pointed out that the entire stadium was built in just 14 months in 1970-71.
The main reason for the change in policy on women in stadiums is widely assumed to be FIFA, the governing body of international soccer. It has been gently pushing Iran for years to admit women. Reportedly, since the last World Cup, FIFA has become more insistent as more of its member federations have become more and more impatient with Iran’s stonewalling. The threat is that FIFA would suspend Iran, which would mean it could not play any international matches and would be banned from qualifying for the next World Cup.
Some in the regime said Iran should just continue to stonewall and could always change its policy if FIFA ever actually did suspend Iran. But others note that the regime dislikes caving in to pressure from abroad, seeing that as conveying weakness.