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.

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[–] Fuckass@hexbear.net 5 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

[–] MultigrainCerealista@hexbear.net 3 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.