this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2023
663 points (97.8% liked)

World News

32352 readers
426 users here now

News from around the world!

Rules:

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Iran has banned a weightlifter from sports for life and dissolved a sports committee after the athlete greeted an Israeli counterpart on a podium.

Mostafa Rajaei, a veteran weightlifter, finished second in his category in the 2023 World Master Weightlifting Championships in Poland and stood on a podium with an Iranian flag wrapped around him on Saturday.

On anther step of the podium stood Maksim Svirsky from Israel, who finished third.

The two athletes shook hands and took a picture together, which led to the Iran Weightlifting Federation banning Rajaei from all sports for life due to what it called an “unforgivable” transgression.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Even if you want to tell yourself the regime has absolute control over information

Even if they did have complete control, I’m pretty sure Iranians want to spread anti Israel sentiment whenever possible, so this ban wouldn’t necessarily be controversial for the government. It would probably be all over the place to encourage more people to do the opposite of the athlete

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Yeah that’s a good point. I don’t see Iran denying this if it were true either so radio silence on the topic makes it seem like it was just made up.