McGavick would bar Iran from soccer's World Cup

WASHINGTON — Republican Senate candidate Mike McGavick has a plan to persuade Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions: Bar its national team from the soccer field.

McGavick, who is challenging Sen. Maria Cantwell in November, wants the international soccer federation to disinvite Iran from the wildly popular World Cup soccer tournament.

Iran, one of 32 teams to make the cut, is slated to play its opening match in Nuremberg, Germany, on June 11.

The initial reaction to McGavick's proposal among some politicians, local blogs and Iranian students in views posted on the Web ranged from laughter to outrage.

"This is not a trivial matter," McGavick said in an interview. "The world needs to use all the tools at its disposal against Iran. It needs to see that it's an outlaw state."

McGavick buttonholed politicians about the matter while in Washington, D.C., last week.

In a campaign in which both McGavick and Cantwell seem determined to keep emotions in check, McGavick's reaction to the Iranian team's impending visit to Nuremberg is downright passionate.

"You cannot have this," he said. "Nuremberg, where the Nazis marched, where we held war-crimes trials, and that's where Iran's president will attend the game? This is the man who just said Israel should be wiped off the map."

The specter of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who also has called the Holocaust a myth, visiting Nuremberg to watch the Iranian team is "too much irony, and it's the worst kind," McGavick said.

Roughly 1.5 million fans are expected to visit Germany for the world's biggest sporting event. It will play out in 12 cities from June 9 to July 9.

Barring Iran from the World Cup, McGavick said, would send the message that Iran's actions and statements are not acceptable to the world community.

"These aren't economic sanctions — the poor won't be denied food or medicine," he said. "But it's the international sport, and Iran's wild about it."

As a student at the University of Washington in the late 1970s and early '80s, McGavick agitated against apartheid in South Africa. He also was a rugby player.

South Africa had the world's top rugby team at the time, but it could not play for the world championship because of international sanctions against apartheid.

"Rugby wasn't the issue that brought down apartheid, but it sent the message that they were not welcome as long as they discriminated against race," McGavick said.

Despite international pressure, Iran is moving ahead with plans to enrich uranium. Iran says it's pursuing a peaceful nuclear-energy program. The United States and other nations fear the country wants to produce nuclear weapons.

McGavick discussed the Iran problem in an article this month for The Weekly Standard, a Washington-based political magazine run by the capital's leading neoconservatives and bankrolled by Rupert Murdoch.

McGavick is not a lone voice. Calls for banning Iran from the World Cup began in January. But in a CNN viewer poll in January, 87 percent rejected the notion of barring Iran. Many viewers recalled the debacle of 1980 when President Carter pulled the United States from the Moscow Olympics because of the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan. Many believed that only the U.S. suffered.

In April, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., introduced a resolution urging the soccer federation to bar Iran. The resolution hasn't moved forward in the Senate.

In Germany, however, the prospect of hosting Iran's president has led to vigorous protests by political parties and students, and concern within the government that neo-Nazi skinheads might turn out to welcome the Iranian leader.

Alicia Mundy: 202-662-7457 or amundy@seattletimes.com