Alireza Jahanbakhsh, captain of Iran's national soccer team, says he was stopped, searched, and robbed by masked cartel members during a tourist visit to Tulum, Quintana Roo, before the 2026 FIFA World Cup. He told the story in an interview with Al Jazeera published on June 12.
The account is now circulating widely, partly because of its unexpected ending — and partly because Jahanbakhsh told it while his team trains in Tijuana, displaced from U.S. soil after the Trump administration denied visas to part of the Iranian coaching and administrative staff.
How the cartel stop unfolded in Tulum
Jahanbakhsh, 32, said he traveled to Tulum with a friend for a few days. He did not specify when the trip took place. At some point during the visit, armed men with their faces completely covered stopped the car he was riding in.
"They made us get out and put our hands on the car and started searching us," he said in the Al Jazeera interview.
Jahanbakhsh said he had been warned not to carry valuables, so he had only a bank card and between 30 and 40 euros on him. The men demanded more money. He said he could not understand exactly how much they wanted.
Then came the question that would change the tone of the encounter. One of the men searching him kept asking, in broken English: "Country, country?"
"Say Iran" — the moment that ended the robbery
Jahanbakhsh's first instinct was to say the Netherlands, where he developed as a player and spent years of his career. His friend — identified in the interview as Benjamín — stopped him.
"Ali, say Iran, say Iran. They are good with Iran," Jahanbakhsh recalled his friend telling him.
He followed the advice. The man searching him began to laugh.
"Oh, Iran! Go, go," the man said. They took his cash, left him his card, and let both men go.
Jahanbakhsh recounted the moment with visible disbelief, laughing as he described it. "My friend goes to Mexico more than me and he says, apparently, cartels love Iranians. I swear, I don't know why. He didn't explain the reason, but he says cartels love Iranians."
He offered no theory and said his friend gave none. The remark, delivered with evident bewilderment, became one of the most-shared clips from the interview.
The cartel encounter lands on Tulum's tourism record
Jahanbakhsh's account adds a high-profile name to a pattern of tourist security incidents in and around Tulum that regional authorities have struggled to address publicly. Armed roadside stops in tourist corridors of Quintana Roo have been documented by travelers and local journalists for years, though Mexican federal and state officials rarely acknowledge organized crime involvement in individual incidents.
The story reaching international audiences through a World Cup athlete, days before the tournament opens, puts Tulum's safety reputation in front of a global sports audience at an unusually sensitive moment for Mexican tourism.
Iran trains in Tijuana as the World Cup approaches
The context around the interview adds its own layer. Iran's squad had originally planned to prepare in the United States, where the 2026 World Cup is co-hosted. The Trump administration denied visas to part of the Iranian technical and administrative delegation, forcing the team to relocate its training base to Tijuana, where the players are working out at Estadio Caliente, home of Club Tijuana Xoloitzcuintles.
Iran's first match is on Monday, June 16, at 6:00 p.m., against New Zealand. The game is scheduled in Inglewood, California, more than 220 kilometers from Tijuana. Under restrictions imposed by the United States, the Iranian delegation must travel to the venue and return the same day.
Jahanbakhsh gave the Al Jazeera interview from that charged setting — a team squeezed between geopolitical friction and a tournament that starts in days, now also attached to a viral story about a cartel stop on a Tulum road.
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