Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.

Support the Forward

Funded by readers like you DonateSubscribe
Fast Forward

Iran’s judo team suspended from international matches until 2023 for refusing to face Israeli opponents

(JTA) — The Iranian national judo team was suspended from international competition until September 2023 for forfeiting matches against Israeli opponents due to a boycott.

The decision extends an ongoing suspension of the Iran Judo Federation that began in 2019, according to a statement from the International Judo Federation. In March, the international group said it would drop the suspension if Iran guaranteed it would allow its judokas to fight Israelis.

This decision reaffirms the ban and appears to preclude Iran from competing in judo in the Tokyo Olympics this summer.

The original ban was instituted when an Iranian judoka said he had been ordered to throw matches at the 2019 World Judo Championships in order to avoid fighting an Israeli, Sagi Muki, who went on to win the tournament.

The statement called Iran’s policy “a scheme whereby the Athlete was required to lose before even getting to the point where he had to face an Israeli athlete in an attempt to disguise the underlying true motive from the IJF and the public.”

Engage

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.