Paris, July 11, 1998. On the evening of the soccer World Cup final, in a room on the first floor of a building on the Champs Elysées, an idea was conceived that would lead to death threats, an unusual FBI stunt, and the closure of the American Air Force Base. space.
That night, the US Soccer Association hosted media representatives to promote the 1999 Women's World Cup.
And while the guests were chatting with each other, two old acquaintances met face to face.
Merdad Masoudi, an Iranian who was finishing his term in the FS of Canada, where he worked as director of communications, was on one side, and Hank Steinbrecher, Secretary General of the FS of America, was on the other.
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Three weeks before that, the two were in Lyon where they watched a game in which Iran beat the United States 2:1.
This match, played within the group stage of the World Cup, was one of the most politically tense matches in the history of the World Cup, precisely because of the mutual enmity between the two countries.
Iran has been under sanctions since 1979, when 52 diplomats were held hostage in the US embassy in Tehran, the same year in which the pro-American monarch - the Shah, was overthrown during the Islamic Revolution.
But on the day of the game, in a presidential address, Bill Clinton said he hoped it would be a step forward toward "ending hostilities between the two nations."
Meanwhile, before the start of the game, the American players were showered with gifts from their opponents.
Regardless of the result, the match represented a diplomatic triumph and that image was present in the minds of Masudi and Steinbrecher when they met, although for different reasons.
"I said - Hank, what do you think about doing this again?" says Masoudi, who had good connections in Iranian football and wanted to arrange another game between the two nations.
"At home and away - Iran to come to America next year, on the anniversary of this match, and you to go to Iran a year later".
Steinbrecher liked the idea. And in everything he saw an additional possibility.
"The match at the World Cup was the heaviest defeat during my tenure," he says.
"We hit the post three times - we didn't play badly, but we were selfish throughout the tournament, so I wanted to put that right."
"They broke us, now let's break them".
There was also an optimistic hope that Iran and America would somehow become closer through sports.
Popular ping-pong diplomacy already managed to bring America and China closer during the 70s.
The handshake between Masudi and Steinbrecher marked the beginning of this attempt.
Now they just had to defeat the political forces that had united against them and somehow get the whole thing moving.
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"Fate wanted these two teams to play in France in 1998," says Masoudi.
"This time, one side wanted to invite the other, which had to accept it, and then both sides had to deal with their governments."
The first condition, a non-negotiable one set by the Iranians, was a request that their delegation would be exempt from fingerprinting and photography upon arrival on US soil.
"I've seen 80-year-old grandmothers go through that treatment, I've seen my own mother go through it all," Masudi says.
"For someone who is not used to this kind of thing, it looks like someone is treating you like a criminal."
"I told Hank he needs to talk to the Foreign Office and Customs and make an exception."
For Steinbrecher, it was the moment he realized that an idea conceived at a cocktail party in Paris would have to go through a series of difficult negotiations over various issues before it would come to fruition in California.
"It seemed like a new crisis was opening every hour," he recalls.
"It ranged from fingerprinting the players, to the fact that the mullahs had a problem with playing matches in a stadium where advertisements for alcoholic beverages can be seen."
"There were many, many obstacles that we had to overcome, and fortunately we were naive enough to think that we were doing all this for the benefit of humanity."
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According to the original idea, the first match was supposed to be played in the summer of 1999 in Washington.
But the symbolism of visiting the city where the White House is located was too important for the Iranian government, which did not allow their team to travel to the United States.
Instead, a new plan was made to move the game to January 2000 at the Rose Bowl Stadium in Los Angeles, home to more than half a million Iranians who called it the Teheranjeles.
It was supposed to be the final match in a friendly tournament in which Ecuador and Mexico also participated.
But two months later, in November 1999, the fingerprinting problem became insurmountable.
Tom Meredith, who was the technical director of the American Football Association, called Masudi and informed him that they had not been able to obtain an exemption from fingerprinting.
Instead, it was proposed that the players be fingerprinted and photographed in an isolated room at the Chicago airport.
"I told Tom that was out of the question," Masudi recalls.
"If I tell the Iranians that, they will immediately cancel the matches. The contract with that condition was signed and I, as an Iranian, don't even want to propose something like that to them".
"It would give people who didn't want this to happen an excuse to prevent the team from traveling."
The decision had to be made by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
They were stubborn, until there was a mysterious intervention after which the Iranian team was exempted from the established procedure and that only a few weeks before the game was played.
"I don't know what the chain of command looked like then, but I think the decision was made at the very top of the American administration," says Steinbrecher, who has been kept in a state of frustration by the apartheid for some time.
"We finished everything, both us and them, but they didn't see it all with the same eyes as our federation".
"There were not many people in the state administration who were able to implement international diplomacy through sports".
In any case, if Steinbrecher and his colleagues thought they were going through the worst possible ordeal, they probably forgot about the complex machinery of the Iranian government, in which the president is not the strongest component.
As the new millennium approached, just days before the Iranian national team was due to take off, a new political crisis was born in Tehran.
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Under pressure from his political masters not to support the hosting, Iran's reformist President Mohammad Khatami told the association's president, Mosen Safai Farahani, to call off the whole thing.
"Ali Safai was a signatory to the contract, all provisions of which were met by the American Football Association, so Iran had a contractual obligation to travel," says Masoudi.
"They should have played games against quality opponents, and they should have made more than $200.000 for playing three games."
"Iran has never earned so much money from playing friendly matches".
Safai Farahani was adamant. The decision was made to go to the tournament.
At that point, Tom Meredith became a key player.
"I wasn't the one contacting other countries and arranging friendlies," says Meredith.
"I was the guy who was told - Hey, we're playing the Iranians, fix this thing."
Meredith traveled to Frankfurt to meet the Iranian team that was in transit, on its way to the US.
And right there, in the transit lounge, he encountered his own crisis.
"There was an Iranian player there who met his team in Germany, where he was playing at the time," Meredith remembers.
"He was about to leave his club after the tour - he showed me the keys to his apartment and said he had to return the keys to get his deposit back."
"I didn't know what to do. On a piece of paper, I wrote to the head of the delegation that 'The US Soccer Association and Thomas P. Meredith bear no responsibility if that player misses his flight.'"
"He signed it, as did I, and it meant that if the player didn't come back to where we are now, it wouldn't be Tom's fault."
The player managed to arrive on time, but then, just before boarding the flight to Chicago, Meredith was told that half of the delegation had tickets that had not been paid for.
"At that moment it was three in the morning in Chicago. Who should I call now? And what can that person do about this," said Meredith.
"He'll hang me no matter what."
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There was only one way out of the situation.
He had to pay the sum of 13.000 dollars out of his own pocket and keep the receipt in a safe place.
"My company credit card had a limit of $5.000, and my personal one had a limit of $30.000."
"I was standing at the airport flipping an imaginary coin telling myself how I had to do it, but I didn't know if I would be able to get my own money back."
He did all that, even paying extra for business class tickets; it was a reward and a relief for the entire staff.
Soon the Iranian team took off, away from the destructive phone calls, on their way to America.
But when they landed at the airport in Chicago, what everyone feared happened.
"There was a separate line at customs because they knew it was a special deal," says Meredith.
"The customs officer came to the first in line, they brought ink pads and said that everyone had to take their fingerprints and take a photo."
"At the same moment, the head of the Iranian delegation said: "Let's go home. We are done. You lied to us".
"I told him I'll take care of everything."
Like some magician, Meredith produced a letter from the head of Chicago's immigration department that said Iranians were exempt from this rule.
And so the Iranian soccer players became only the second sports delegation from that country, after the wrestling team five years earlier, to set foot on US soil after the 1979 revolution.
The liaison officer, Iranian-American soccer referee Esfandiar Baharmast, was in charge of the players.
In 1972, he joined the growing number of Iranian students moving to the US.
Regardless of his academic degree in chemical engineering, football was his passion.
After a serious knee injury, his playing ambitions were over.
He became a soccer referee, and refereed at the World Cup in 1998. In January 2000, he became the director of the refereeing organization at the American Football Association.
But as an Iranian fan, he was living the dream.
"I was with the players all the time," he says.
"From the moment they arrived until the day they boarded the plane and left."
"We took them on trips, we went shopping with them, we did everything that was necessary, and we visited Universal Studios, went to the Golden Gate Bridge and Lombard Street in San Francisco."
"I wanted to make sure they enjoyed themselves and for all that I am grateful to both federations."
"Henk Steinbrecher was truly a man of the world. He understood the importance of the whole thing and did everything to make their stay here comfortable."
He was most proud when he saw that the match would be played in a spirit of peace and friendship.
"The idea was to show in 90 minutes that we can significantly improve relations between the two countries."
And when the Iranians finally arrived on American soil, a covert security operation could begin.
"There were people in disguise who were watching us every moment and who knew where we were, but they were not intrusive," says Baharmast.
"If we didn't know they were around us, we didn't know who these people were either"
In the first two games, Iran beat Ecuador 2:1 and lost to Mexico by the same score.
In both games, the team played in front of boisterous fans of Iranian origin.
But as the game with America approached, the pleasant socializing slowly began to turn into heightened attention that crept out of the darkness.
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Iranians started receiving phone calls from a subversive Islamic group in their hotel rooms.
Players were offered money not to play, threats were made if they played.
"Two days before the match, Iran coach Mansur Purhedari said someone called him and offered him a million dollars to withdraw the team from the game," says Masoudi, who took a leave of absence from work in London to be with the players.
The president of the Iranian Football Association was contacted by someone who claimed to be calling on the orders of the highest authorities in Tehran, threatening that their plane would be shot down if the match was played.
"I was there when that call was made to him," Masudi says.
"He was very determined and said, 'The people you claim to represent know where I am. They have my phone number and can call me themselves."
According to one theory, which was taken very seriously, the sponsorship of a liquor company outraged the religious sentiments of those making the threats.
The general sponsor of the match was to be Anheuser-Busch, the company that produced Budweiser beer.
At the meeting held on the eve of the match itself, the American federation offered to change the main sponsor.
"I told them that I knew the people at Anheuser-Busch and that I was going to take care of this," said the union's general secretary at the time, Hank Steinbrecher.
"I'll give them more advertising space in the next game - there's no point in risking anything about this match."
But Safaji Farahani flatly refused this offer.
"He said that, as an organizer in football, he knows how difficult it is to find sponsors. He also added that he knows that if they lose this show, I will also lose my reputation with them," says Masudi.
"I was translating it all and I had to hold back tears to finish the sentence".
Steinbrecher recalls: "We want to talk about moral integrity? He showed me where he stood on the matter. And believe me, it was about a very solid man".
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However, all measures have been taken to keep the Iranian players safe.
All roads leading to the hotel where they were staying were closed, except for one vehicle, Masudi's.
"To make sure no one would follow the players on the way to the stadium, the FBI parked a fake bus, with 'Iranian' branding," he says.
"The real bus was out of sight of the curious, in an abandoned underground parking lot."
The decoy, with fake football players on board, went first.
When he left, the Iranian national team went through the kitchen and down the freight elevators to the garage.
The Rose Bowl in Pasadena has already hosted two World Cup finals, as well as the final of the 1984 Olympic soccer tournament.
But the question is whether those matches brought the kind of atmosphere that this friendly match brought with it.
In a move that today brings to mind an eerie echo of what would happen 18 months later, on September 11, air traffic over the stadium was suspended in case someone planned to fly over the area.
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The traditional American picnic in parking lots, which is typical for all sports events in America, when food and drinks are served on the hoods of cars, was held this time as well, but with some changes.
"Instead of steaks and burgers, Iranian kebabs were prepared," says Masudi.
“Outside the stadium, everything looked like a typical NFL event. But if you came a little closer, saw the people and smelled the food, it would be clear to you that this is an American show organized by the Iranians."
One of the 50.180 fans present was Said Musavian, who traveled to Los Angeles from Colorado.
"How many times do you get the chance to watch your national team live?"
"I kind of had a feeling that this kind of opportunity wouldn't come again," he said.
"At that time I was dating an American woman. Onaj went with me and painted her face in the colors of the Iranian and American flags. And I also persuaded her to wear the Iranian jersey".
"After the game, an American player was asked if he would go to Iran to play a friendly match there. He said: "That is no longer necessary, because today we played in Iran".
"The atmosphere was amazing and everyone was happy. Whenever the Americans played a good move, and even when they scored a goal, we applauded them."
"I wasn't happy when they scored, but on the other hand, it was a great shot."
The hope of Iranian football, winger Mehdi Mahdavikia scored the leading goal.
In the second half, Iranian attacks were stopped and Chris Armas managed to equalize the score.
The final 1:1 was a diplomatic result that could not be used politically.
But he failed to ease the bad relations between the two countries, as many had hoped.
Tensions between the two nations have remained present until today.
"We were naive," says Steinbrecher.
"We thought that through sports we were doing a very good thing for our countries. But on the other hand, if you don't believe in higher goals, then it's better not to try anything."
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The aforementioned rematch, which was part of the original plan, has yet to take place.
The USA was invited to participate in a tournament called the Civilization Cup in January 2001, where they were supposed to represent the new world and Iran, Greece and Egypt the old.
However, the fee they demanded for such a performance was unacceptable to the Iran Football Association.
Despite everything, for the organizers, the friendly match that started the new millennium with hope for a better tomorrow was not in vain.
"On the floor of my home is a prayer rug that I received as a gift from the Iranian delegation," says Tom Meredith.
"It's one of the most beautiful things I own. In fact, if there was a fire in my house, that would definitely be one of the things I would grab and take with me."
"I am very proud to have been a part of all this, as a student of history, geopolitics and sports".
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