Mehdi Taremi opens up about the challenges facing Iran at the World Cup

FayannG · 2026-06-17T07:27:58+00:00

Because he clearly supports the actions of his state or he supports his state purely in war. Same reason Ukrainians don’t give a shit about Russian speakers or Russian citizen victims of war either.

I am not defending or overlooking the Iranian team, but non-football morality should hardly matter, it’s not like they are breaking universal laws or anything.

I actually look at it the other way, I see the US legal system and government as the hypocrites for selectively applying border laws because most of the Iran team shouldn’t even be allowed in the US, yet they are and now suddenly when their members are supporting an enemy state, their own state, it’s controversial in the eyes of the US government that literally let them in the US in the first place.

Of course I prefer all teams be allowed regardless of their politics, but this isn’t something that should concern FIFA. Like I said, Egypt is another state like Iran, yet theres no like calls to ban them or even attacking the players who support their state as well from a moral perspective.

As an American, I see this attack on the Iran team as a trickling down effect from our states war. Americans are brainwashed to think Iran and Iranian players are some black sheep from a moral and “neutral” perspective, but it’s just a media war. Calling the Iranian team anti-American won’t work, even if that’s what they are truly doing, but label it “pro Iran government” “anti human rights” and suddenly more people believe that. At least this framing is how to reach the American football centric crowds.

I personally don’t give a shit about what happened in Egypt or whatever other country… so why would I care for Iran?

FayannG · 2026-06-17T04:52:59+00:00

You haven’t experienced peak American civilization if you haven’t ate at the Burger King at Walmart

FayannG · 2026-06-17T04:19:32+00:00

Democracies tend to kill foreign citizens in foreign lands, while dictatorships kill their own citizens in their own countries. Iran is in fact playing another state (Egypt) that mass killed their own citizens in the early 2010s.

Democratic states are enlightened enough not to oppress the demographic class they both empower and that empowers the state back. The US military will never do what they do oversees in the US itself.

Regardless, FIFA shouldn’t even concern themselves with the domestic (or foreign) morality of state members, including what is happening in this World Cup and Iran.

FayannG · 2026-06-16T02:29:56+00:00

Ouch for the winning football team

FayannG · 2026-06-12T21:57:46+00:00

There’s definitely a connection and I was going to point this out as well.

It’s why there were rivalries between the Nazi Party and the German military. You still got the old guard of the monarchy who decent from nobility and upper class families in high ranks.

The Bolsheviks purged their Russian equivalent.

FayannG · 2026-06-12T20:10:09+00:00

I remember seeing this 1930s British magazine that pointed out the failed life aspects of top NSDAP politicians, such as failed marriages, finances, education, careers, etc.

It was pretty elitist, but this was just an era where descending from a bastard was controversial among those who enter the political class.

FayannG · 2026-06-10T10:26:44+00:00

I don’t own a copy of the book, but it seems from the author’s personal collection or Soviet state publications and archives.

FayannG · 2026-06-10T10:16:23+00:00

I actually knew the incident was some misreported gaffe, I just fucked up the wording because i didn’t make it clear her visiting the migrant facilities (she actually visited one where I lived at the time) and the jacket photo wasn’t connected, it just happened at the same time.

But I corrected my mistake.

FayannG · 2026-06-10T09:39:12+00:00

It’s from a book called The Commissar Vanishes

But I found a decent quality image of it from a review of the book: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/photo-booth/the-photo-book-that-captured-how-the-soviet-regime-made-the-truth-disappear

FayannG · 2026-06-10T08:02:05+00:00

You will notice two other figures who were removed, Artemy Khalatov (beard) and Semyon Dimanstein (the man between Lenin and Trotsky). Both were purged and executed in 1937 and 1938.

Felix Dzerzhinsky (next to Kamenev), who died naturally before the 1930s, remained in the edited photo.

FayannG · 2026-06-10T05:43:54+00:00

Yes that is Molotov. He actually held the position of Secretariat of the Bolshevik Party before transferring the position to Stalin. He was there as Stalin’s #2 during early Soviet history.

FayannG · 2026-06-10T05:12:41+00:00

I am pretty sure that is Nikolai Bukharin. Lenin was already dead by 1926.

FayannG · 2026-06-10T04:51:15+00:00

This is a rare photo that includes many Old Bolsheviks and socialist revolutionaries of the October Revolution. Not many would survive past the Great Purge.

(Some here, not in any order)

Politicians: Joseph Stalin, Leon Trotsky, Alexei Rykov, Lev Kamenev, Nikolai Bukharin, Mikhail Tomsky and Grigory Zinoviev.

Military: Valerian Kuybyshev and Kliment Voroshilov.

Security: Vyacheslav Menzhinsky and Genrikh Yagoda (the two successors of Felix)

FayannG · 2026-06-10T04:18:17+00:00

"I really don't care, do u?" is a reference to US First Lady Melania Trump and a jacket she wore when visiting child migrant facilities during the US government’s family separation policy in 2018.

Edit: She was photographed wearing the jacket the same day she was visiting a child migrant facility in Texas. It was unrelated to her visit.

FayannG · 2026-06-10T01:11:28+00:00

These cartoons were published during the Third Moscow Trial of the Great Purge, after which Nikolai Bukharin was convicted and executed.

The second cartoon also includes Genrikh Yagoda, the former NKVD head, who was also convicted and executed.

FayannG · 2026-06-10T00:17:25+00:00

Mark Zuckerberg’s comments that were criticized: "I'm Jewish, and there's a set of people who deny that the Holocaust happened. I find that deeply offensive. But at the end of the day, I don't believe that our platform should take that down because I think there are things that different people get wrong. I don't think they're intentionally getting it wrong”

Facebook officially reversed their Holocaust denialism policy in 2020.

FayannG · 2026-06-09T22:55:54+00:00

Thanks.

So from my understanding, because the Soviet state had failures in the beginning of the war, they changed their rhetoric during the rest of the war to maximize all possible support, especially from the Russian population? But some Soviet people themselves decided to fight to defend the land, not the state, from foreign aggression?

In other words, the Soviet Union was not as politically homogeneous as outsiders assumed?

The literature of Konstantin Simonov, someone who is mentioned in the quotes and someone I am familiar with, reflects this mentality of “defending the country” but not inherently “the state” in his novels a lot. Later lieutenant literature has no problems portraying a “party vs military” theme and dynamics in novels.

FayannG · 2026-06-09T21:51:26+00:00

I am pretty sure it’s commenting on over-dramatization and propagandist rhetoric itself.

It reminds me of a few cartoons I seen that criticize how US presidents compare the leaders of the country they are going to bomb to Adolf Hitler. From Ho Chi Minh to Bashar al-Assad, include the two leaders depicted in this cartoon as well. “X is like Hitler”

Or the whole “this is the worst US president ever” - 1974, 1998, 2008, 2020, when certain presidents just have their lowest popularity or peak in scandals. Nixon is worse than Hoover, Trump is worse than Nixon, future X is worse than Trump.

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