Sport

Iranwire – Sara Pour-Azima, a member of Iran’s national Under-17 National Equestrian Team, was stood at the airport, backs packed and already checked onto the flight, when she was told her father had barred her from leaving Iran. The 12-year-old had an official letter from the International Equestrian Federation (FEI) inviting her to personally take part in the Eurasian Championships …

Iranwire – Two Iranian athletes will face off in the taekwondo opening rounds at this summer’s Tokyo Olympics: Nahid Kiani from Iran’s national team, and Kimia Alizadeh from the independent Olympic Refugee Team. Iran’s mainstream media has fixated on the competition – calling it “unexpected” and “attractive,” but also “sensitive” – but Fars News Agency, which is affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard …

(CNN) – Athletes are trained to be tough; they’ve learned to push through the pain barrier and find courage when all hope might seem to be lost.But athletes in Iran have to be braver than most. For them, the battle isn’t just on the field of play, it’s also away from the arenas, where the consequences of their actions could …

Iranwire – A statue in honor of legendary Iranian wrestler Gholamreza Takhti were unveiled on Tuesday of June 22, 2021 by the National Olympic Committee. It immediately became the subject of a critical report by the Revolutionary Guards-aligned Fars News Agency. In the report, Fars criticized Reza Saleh Amiri, a former intelligence official who became president of the National Olympic …

Iranwire – The National Olympic Committee of Iran has selected Samad Nikkhah Bahrami, the captain of the Iranian national basketball team, to be the flag bearer for the Iranian team at the Tokyo Olympics opening ceremony. According to a Mehr News Agency report on Monday, June 21, four male athletes made the final shortlist to lead the Olympic team: Basketball captain Samad Nikkhah …

Iranwire – This week the International Olympic Committee (IOC) unveiled the Olympic Refugee Team for the delayed Tokyo 2020 games. The list of 28 scholarship-holders from 11 countries, who trained in 13 separate host nations, has been in the making since 2018 and five Iranian athletes are now set to compete under the shared banner. Among them are Saeed Fazlouli, a …

Iranwire – Shahrzad Nazifi, an Iranian Baha’i and the first woman to hold an official rank in motocross and motorcycle racing in Iran, has been sentenced in absentia to eight years in prison by Branch 26 of the Revolutionary Court of Tehran. Nazifi’s lawyer Mohammad Hadi Erfanian Kaseb announced the sentence by Judge Imam Afshari on his Twitter account. He …

Al-Arabia – The Iranian crude oil that appeared to be imported by the United States in March was from tankers the US had previously seized, sources familiar with the matter said Wednesday. Confusion surrounded the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) publication of 1.033 million barrels of Iranian crude oil that appeared to be imported by the US earlier this year. For all the …

Al-Monitor – “It is a targeted practice. The interrogators are given special training to systematically break the morale of jailed women,” stated Iranian rights advocate Narges Mohammadi. She was recounting details of how dissident women are subject to various forms of mistreatment during interrogation by Iran’s Intelligence Ministry and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Addressing a meeting on the social media …

Shabtabnews – In an open letter a group of organizations and individuals who are scholars, NGO leaders, human rights advocates, religious freedom activists, and practitioners, urge the United States Soccer Federation to remove Volkswagen as a presenting sponsor due to Volkswagen continuing to operate a plant in Xinjiang, the Uyghur Region of China. The letter ends with stating : “Given …