A small but telling detail from a vast and baffling chain of events. You probably saw the footage of Donald Trump’s declaration of war on Iran two weeks ago, a piece of history played out in real time, a moment where the inevitable violent deaths of thousands of people were in effect announced.
In the video Trump is shown propped up at his plinth, using that sing-song intonation he employs to appear cod-statesmanlike, faux-grave, but sounding instead like a semi-sentient robot vacuum cleaner in the seconds before it runs out of battery life. To the great people of Iran. America is backing you. Don’t go outside. It’s very dangerous out there. We will for the foreseeable future be bombing you to freedom.
Having bragged about sending servicemen and women to commit acts of war, Trump moves on to encouraging the people of Iran to walk into the path of one of the world’s most viciously militarised states. Guys. This is your big chance. Like the Kurds. Remember the first Gulf war? The great, very brave, very massacred Kurdish people. So do it now. Go out and overthrow a murderous theocracy with your bare hands. If you’re up for it.
This was not a suggestion it would be reasonable or logical to act on. It was a speech to posterity. It was a retrospective justification being laid down, in effect a disclaimer, to the extent Trump should probably have read it in a super-quick voice like the terms and conditions at the end of a gambling advert. Well, we did ask the great people of Iran to self-massacre on our behalf. We put it out there.
Throughout this moment of huge global significance, a montage clip for the 21st century, Trump is wearing a cheap-looking white cap with a USA logo on it. It’s a small detail. But it’s still jarring. He looks like a Florida golf pensioner ordering the surf and turf platter at an early bird diner. Presidents don’t generally wear random baseball caps to declare war. The cap is not White House issue or Republican party uniform.
But if you follow football you may recognise it. The hat is a piece of Trump-branded kit, available to buy from his website. Trump is in effect using a declaration of war to shift merch. He’s monetising death. Currently the cap is one of the first items to pop up on the Trump merch portal. $55 plus delivery. Three colours. “An instant icon.” You might have to be patient though. A line of text states that the official death hat will take longer to ship right now due to “high demand”. So job done. The greatest, most unit-shiftingest piece of product placement in the history of bombing campaigns.
The giveaway is this cap has been seen in public before. It’s the same one Gianni Infantino was wearing as Fifa’s representative at the grotesque and noxious Board of Peace meeting the week before. Here we have the most visible representative of the global game, the greatest cut-through available to any political leader, out there laughing it up as the missiles are loaded. And doing so in the Donald Trump death cap, putting football in the situation room, dragging the sport you love into the publicity apparatus for a military campaign.
And now we have this, another Fifa war-at-one-remove moment. This week the players of Iran’s women’s football team were condemned by state television as “traitors”. The reason for this is the team refused to sing the national anthem before their game at the Asia Cup against South Korea on Monday. They did sing the anthem before the game against Australia three days later, before which Sara Didar, a 21-year-old player from Bam Khatoon FC, spoke openly and tearfully about the situation at home.
It is hard to overstate the bravery of this act of non-compliance. These women are in effect prisoners. They have no escape hatch, nowhere to hide from potential consequences. Iran’s men’s team also refused to sing the anthem in Qatar in 2022. CNN reported their families were told they would suffer “violence and torture” if they repeated this. The men are high-profile athletes, some based abroad. Iran was at that time keen to stay in Fifa competitions.
Four years on Iran is murdering protesters, murdering women, and murdering footballers. Human rights organisations reported the deaths of tens of thousands of people in the streets since January. The website Josimar published an article this week reporting that the regime killed two full teams-worth of footballers and football people in 48 hours. Mojtaba Tarshiz, a former player with Tractor FC in the Iran Pro League, was among the January protesters killed. Josimar reports that Tarshiz and his wife were cornered by security forces. Tarshiz shielded his wife when officers opened fire and was struck by more than a hundred shotgun pellets. There are many such stories in the article.
This is the background to the Iran team’s act of protest. The Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting presenter Mohammad Reza Shahbazi said on television this week: “Let me just say one thing: traitors during wartime must be dealt with more severely.” Search for the ambiguity in that statement if you can. These athletes have placed themselves in grave danger to express solidarity, protest and desperation. It is one of the great acts of sporting heroism.
Football has already let them down. Iran should not be taking part in the World Cup. Russia has been exiled from international sport. Israel may well be, if those in power can bring themselves to apply some level of moral equivalence. But Infantino shows no sign of losing any sleep over this. He will bend to the nearest authoritarian, his World Cup co-hosts this time, Russia and Qatar previously, Saudi Arabia before long. He will sit laughing in his Trump-branded hat, dragging football into the room as war is declared, assisting in the job of flooding the zone with misdirection.Iran’s footballers have done all they can to express resistance. Sport gave them the platform. It can’t practically help them now, but governments can. Quite simply, there is no way anyone in power should countenance allowing these women to be flown back to Iran if it is not their wish. Australia can provide asylum. The UK can offer a safe haven. If he had any sense of moral leadership Infantino would right now be calling for action, intervention, transparency. But then, we know which cap fits here.
