Coming to America: Iranian team in Utah for friendly exhibition games

Uniformed personnel from one of the "Axis of Evil" nations have arrived deep inside the heart of "the Great Satan" and are preparing their forces to engage foreign opposition.

That's one scary, keep-clicking-on-the-Drudge-Report-for-updates way of looking at it.

Another less-tense-sounding way?

Iran's national basketball team is visiting the United States to play some friendly exhibition games in Utah against U.S. teams.

In other words, an international crisis is not on the horizon — just some hoops.

So don't turn on the cable news channels; these visitors are more likely to show up on ESPN. No need to alert the State Department, either. Officials from that U.S. government office extended the olive-branch invitation to these guests as part of a peaceful exchange program masterminded by President Bush.

As part of Iran's Beijing Olympics preparation, the reigning FIBA Asian basketball champions accepted the offer. It's part of a world tour that will take the squad from Australia to Slovenia to the Rocky Mountain Revue to the Middle East and then to China.

After practice Thursday night, Iranian player Iman Zandi said through a State Department-provided interpreter that he believes exchanges like these are "really important to bring two countries together" because goodwill can be built through good sportsmanship.

Iran Basketball Federation director Mashhoun Raza agreed with that, but he insisted this is more of a basketball business trip for his country's team than an American vacation or a diplomatic mission.

"We want to learn some more techniques of the basketball in America to take with us back," Raza said. "America is one of the best basketball teams in the world, so we are here to get some experience from them and play with them and to learn from them (and) get to a higher level."

The Iranians did have at least one coming-to-America condition: They'll play and talk about basketball but not politics.

That's a message Jazz coach Jerry Sloan, whose summer-league team plays Iran on Monday, would wholeheartedly endorse. He's much more concerned about how to score around Iran's 7-foot-5 center instead of discussing the latest on Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or other global affairs.

"We play whoever's here. My concern in the summer league is not who you're playing against," Sloan said when asked about Iran's inclusion in the Revue. "This is not about politics. I'm in basketball. I'm not in politics."