TO HELL AND BACK: THE 1968 ASIAN CUP FINALS AS A TEST CASE FOR IRAN–ISRAEL RELATIONS

Abstract

In May 1968, Iran and Israel’s national football teams met in the final match of that year’s Asian Cup. While for the Israelis it was a confrontation in the sports arena, the Iranians saw the game differently: “The general public treats the event as a [national] confrontation, and in its mind are blended elements of a test of force between a Muslim country and Israel,” reported the Israeli delegation in Tehran to Jerusalem.1 The purpose of the present study is to examine how processes within the inner Iranian arena (the covert level—the competition on the pitch) were expressed in the final game of the Asian Cup (1968) between the teams of Iran and Israel, and how the confrontation on the turf (the overt level—the social arena) affected relations between the two countries and the local population’s attitude toward the Jewish minority in Iran.