You don’t have to be Welsh, Iranian or especially into football to have found good reasons to watch today’s World Cup clash of the two nations. Not because of what happened in the game – two late Iran goals to break Welsh hearts – so much as what preceded it. For the few moments before kick-off offered a brief glimpse of an uprising that may yet become a revolution – an upheaval that not only has enormous implications for Iran, its region and the wider world, but which is also reminding those of us in what we like to think of as the liberal, enlightened west of things we take for granted and may even have forgotten.
The specific focus was the pre-match singing of national anthems. When Iran played England on Monday, the team pointedly refused to sing, a gesture of defiance against their country’s rulers and in solidarity with its people, many thousands of whom have spent the last two months engaged in open revolt against what they see as the corrupt, repressive theocracy that has held power in Tehran for 43 years. Before the match, there had been much debate about whether the England captain should wear an armband to protest against Qatar’s trampling of LGBTQ+ rights; in the end, Harry Kane decided against it, for fear of the referee’s yellow card.
