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{"id":24297,"date":"2026-06-15T02:47:19","date_gmt":"2026-06-15T02:47:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/new-zealands-diplomatic-breakaway\/"},"modified":"2026-06-15T02:47:19","modified_gmt":"2026-06-15T02:47:19","slug":"new-zealands-diplomatic-breakaway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/new-zealands-diplomatic-breakaway\/","title":{"rendered":"New Zealand\u2019s diplomatic breakaway"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>LOS ANGELES \u2014 In many World Cup host cities, competing teams also find themselves jostling for soft-power supremacy around their matches. But before its first match tomorrow in Los Angeles, New Zealand has had the diplomatic landscape all to itself.<\/p>\n<p>New Zealand is scheduled to face Iran, which has not had formal diplomatic relations with the United States since 1980. Even as President Donald Trump claims an end to the countries\u2019 monthslong war is at hand, Iran will be competing in the World Cup under severe travel restrictions. The team has been forced from its original Tucson training camp to Tijuana, and is being forced to effectively commute to its matches in the U.S. without a full government delegation.<\/p>\n<p>That has left New Zealand alone in pressing its off-field agenda in Los Angeles. On Sunday evening, New Zealand consul-general Katja Ackerley opened her Brentwood mansion to a \u201cNew Zealand on the World Stage\u201d networking reception sponsored by the government agencies overseeing the country&#8217;s trade, sport and foreign-investment portfolios.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s all about soft power, it\u2019s all about person-to-person,\u201d said Peter Miskimmin, the government\u2019s head of sports diplomacy. \u201cWe are building relations through sport rather than bringing up arms against one another.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The country\u2019s Los Angeles diplomatic outpost typically focuses on promoting exports of wine and lamb, expediting visas for Hollywood personnel traveling for location shoots and addressing the perpetual crisis of \u201cKiwis losing their passports in Las Vegas,\u201d as one previous inhabitant of the office put it.<\/p>\n<p>A delegation of New Zealand officials was preparing for their first World Cup appearance since 2010 uncertain whether any of their opposite numbers from Iran would attend, and how that might affect the standard match-day pageantry.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is our first World Cup in 16 years so we can\u2019t tell what\u2019s different,\u201d said James Wear, a general manager of the New Zealand Football Association. \u201cWe don\u2019t have anything to compare.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>LOS ANGELES \u2014 In many World Cup host cities, competing teams also find themselves jostling for soft-power supremacy around their matches. But before its first match tomorrow in Los Angeles, New Zealand has had the diplomatic landscape all to itself. New Zealand is scheduled to face Iran, which has not had formal diplomatic relations with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24297\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}