Kansas City Star columnist Joe Posnanski says the entire Iranian Olympic team should be sent packing.
When Arash Miresmaeili, a two-time world champion, disqualified himself from a judo match against an Israeli opponent, the Iranian government supported the snub; an Iranian spokesman said Miresmaeili simply followed government policy not to compete against ‘athletes of the Zionist regime,’ and Iranian President Mohammad Khatami said the withdrawal would go down ‘in the history of Iranian glories…[Miresmaeili is] the champion of the 2004 Olympic Games.’
Posnanski writes:
This was Iran snubbing its nose at the Olympic Games and everything — absolutely everything — the Games are supposed to stand for. This was a country using the Games as a stage to inflame the emotions of a nation of 70 million (against a nation, incidentally, less than one-tenth its size). This was pure hostility under the Olympic torch.
Now, Iran has to be sent home. Otherwise, the Olympic Games are an utter sham. Otherwise, you might as well burn flags in that torch.
AFP reports that the Iranian’s ‘identification with the Palestinian cause’ was not his only motivation:
In Tehran on Saturday, it was reported that Miresmaeili was still due to receive a 115,000-dollar cash purse set aside by the Iranian authorities for gold medal winners.
UPDATE: Dan Wetzel makes the same point in an article in Yahoo Sports.
