Markwayne Mullin’s celebration of Iran’s World Cup exit is awful

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told reporters this week he was thrilled Iran was knocked out of the World Cup.

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“I’m just glad they’re done, and they’re not coming back,” Mullin said, according to Politico. “I was so happy when we were able to pull their visas and said they could leave U.S. soil, and I might have sung a song or two, or maybe danced a happy dance.”

In the pantheon of Trumpian rhetoric, Mullin’s comments are first-rate: classless, needlessly turning an unrelated issue into culture-war fare, and overall bad for U.S. policy.

The World Cup is a joyful occasion for the nations of the world to unite over love of sport and competition. Yet the Trump administration has done everything in its power to politicize the event, including posting messages of support for the U.S. men’s team laced with right-wing nationalist rhetoric. It has used the tournament like a pawn in its larger geopolitical strategy by treating the Iranian team as a national security threat.

According to Politico, Mullin alleged that Iran’s team tried to bring to the U.S. “numerous individuals with ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, including personnel who had never previously traveled with the national team and two individuals presented as media members had connections to IRGC intelligence.” The Iranian Embassy in Mexico did not respond to a request for comment, Politico noted. Iran has called previous claims by Mullin about efforts to bring an individual with links to the IRGC into the United States “fabricated and entirely baseless.”

The Trump administration did not present evidence to substantiate its claims or reveal its criteria for alleging “ties” to the IRGC. But given the Department of Homeland Security’s track record of false and misleading claims about immigrant behavior, there’s good reason to be skeptical. Moreover, even if the allegations were true, it made no sense as a pretext for U.S. officials to systematically mistreat and then badmouth Iran’s team.