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		</div><p>Iranian women draped their national flag round their shoulders as they watched a World Cup qualifier in Tehran – the first time they have been allowed into a stadium in decades.</p>
<p>The sight of women in the stands at Azadi Stadium for Iran’s game against Cambodia marks a decades-long push for the right to do so, following a 1981 ban that followed the country’s Islamic Revolution.</p>
<p>Iran allocated just 4,000 tickets for women in a stadium that seats about 80,000 people, keeping them separated from men and under the protection of female police officers.</p>
<p>Face-painted Iranian women have often cheered on their team abroad for years, despite being banned from doing so at home.</p>
<p>Zahra Pashaei, a 29-year-old nurse who has only known football games from television, said: <em>“We are so happy that finally we got the chance to go to the stadium. It’s an extraordinary feeling.</em></p>
<p><em>“At least for me, 22 or 23 years of longing and regret lies behind this.”</em></p>
<p>Iran scored in the game’s fifth minute with a long shot by midfielder Ahmad Nourollahi, and were 7-0 up by half-time.</p>
<p>On Iran’s conservatively-controlled state television, which carried the match live, a shot of the cheering crowd included ecstatic women spectators.</p>
<p>The decision to allow women into the game came amid pressure from football’s world governing body Fifa, which had threatened Iran with a ban if it did not permit female supporters in the ground.</p>
<p>Iran was the world’s last nation to lift a bar on women at matches after Saudi Arabia recently did so.</p>
<p>The effort to allow women back into stadiums has gone through fits and starts since the revolution. Iran even barred a woman from holding a sign for the country when it attended its first Summer Olympics in 1986 in South Korea.</p>
<p>A group of Irish women received special permission to attend a qualifier between Iran and Ireland in Tehran in 2001.</p>
<p>In 2006, former hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said he wanted women to attend matches to “improve soccer-watching manners and promote a healthy atmosphere”. However, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has final say on all matters of state, opposed the decision.</p>
<p>Then, last year, Iranian authorities allowed a select group of women into Azadi Stadium by invitation only to watch the Asian Champion League final.</p>
<p>Activist groups outside of Iran, however, remain suspicious of Tehran. Amnesty International called Thursday’s decision “a cynical publicity stunt by the authorities intended to whitewash their image”.</p>
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