Resistance to the ban comes at a time when the Women’s World Cup has given soccer a worldwide spotlight for players, fans and others to speak out about several gender issues, including pay equity and investments in women’s teams by national federations. (Iran has a women’s national team, which plays its games in head scarves and in front of only female fans when at home, with male fans prohibited from attending.)

The lack of progress is embarrassing for Infantino, who attended a game in Tehran in November 2018 with senior Iranian officials. For that game, Iran lifted the prohibition, allowing a few hundred women to attend. Infantino described the event as a momentous sign of progress, while activists described it as a stunt, no more than an exercise designed to fool a credulous foreign dignitary.

Shojaei said she told FIFA’s secretary general, Fatma Samoura, ahead of the game that the Iranians would use Infantino’s appearance at the game at Tehran’s Azadi Stadium to put on a “show.” She also presented Samoura with a petition that had more than 200,000 signatures.

“Without getting guarantees that women could buy tickets and by sitting there with women who were placed there for him to see, he took part in a charade that was a terrible betrayal of Iranian women who have been begging him in writing for years to act,” said Minky Worden, director of global initiatives at Human Rights Watch. “Every Iranian woman knew that this was a charade and they wouldn’t be allowed in.”

FIFA declined to comment.

Infantino’s letter expressed alarm at incidents surrounding an exhibition game between Iran and Syria on June 6, just a day before the start of the Women’s World Cup. Women trying to attend the game were detained by security for several hours, including some who claimed they were beaten.

Other campaigns to lift the ban on women predate the efforts by Shojaei, who in April put her name to a complaint against the Iranian federation that was submitted to FIFA’s ethics committee. The committee is notorious for operating with little transparency.