A team of United States wrestlers, including Coronado High School graduate Henry Cejudo, were welcomed to Iran on Tuesday with bouquets of pink and white flowers at a time of increasing tensions between the two countries.
The Americans, wearing jackets emblazoned with "USA Wrestling," were given the warm greeting by young girls in traditional Iranian dresses at an airport in the southern city of Bandar Abbas.
The 14 wrestlers are to participate Thursday and Friday in the Persian Gulf Cup, also known as the Takhti Cup, the top wrestling tournament in Iran, where the sport has been a national obsession for centuries.
In a small - but significant for Iranians - goodwill gesture, the American wrestlers were exempted from having their fingerprints taken as they entered the country. Iran imposed the fingerprint requirement on Americans after the U.S. imposed a similar rule on visiting Iranians. In 2003, Iran boycotted the world freestyle wrestling championships in New York because of the U.S. policy, seen as humiliating.
It is the first time that Americans have participated in the competition since hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to power in 2005, further souring already bad relations between Tehran and Washington.
The visit came on the same day a U.S. aircraft carrier group was to start heading for the region in what Washington has said is a show of strength directed at Tehran.
President Bush has accused Iran and Syria of fueling bloodshed in Iraq and vowed the U.S. military would prevent them from supplying militants in the war-torn country.