The June 11 front-page article “Iran’s World Cup team finds an unlikely home” quoted Iran’s ambassador to Mexico, Abolfazl Pasandideh, regarding U.S.-imposed restrictions on his team: “Politics needs to be separate from sports.” He also said that if the two activities mix, “politics must be at the service of sports.”
That’s rich coming from a representative of a regime that routinely puts sports in the service of politics. Iran forces its female athletes to wear hijabs and forbids athletes from competing against Israelis — even if it means throwing matches.
In 2020, taekwondo champion Kimia Alizadeh, the first Iranian woman to win an Olympic medal, defected to Bulgaria. In an Instagram post, she wrote, “Whatever they said, I wore.” Alizadeh added, “Every sentence they ordered, I repeated.”
A year earlier, the Islamic Republic intimidated Iranian judoka Saeid Mollaei, threatened his family and pressured him not to compete against Israeli Sagi Muki. Mollaei resisted the regime’s pressure but lost a match, disqualifying him from competing against Muki. But because he initially defied the regime, Mollaei was forced into hiding and later defected.
For Iran, sports are at the service of the regime.
David Gerstman, Baltimore
The writer is a media research analyst at the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis.
(Note: The Washington Post published the above letter on June 19, 2026)