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.

    • Cethin
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      81 year ago

      Hold up, assigning traits to a government made up by people (a group of people) is weird, but assigning traits to a different group of people isn’t? I don’t really disagree, but you can’t agree with the comment above you and agree with your comment also.

      • s0ykaf [he/him]
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        71 year ago

        you can’t agree with the comment above you and agree with your comment also.

        of course i can; if i couldn’t, i wouldn’t, but i did it, which is proof that i can do it

        • Cethin
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          41 year ago

          You can’t while being a reasonable, logically consistent person. You can if you argue in bad faith, which I expect but usually people don’t take pride in that.