As the 2020 Summer Olympics play out in Tokyo, major controversy strikes yet again after a recent gold medal win by an alleged member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
Javad Foroughi is the first and only medal winner for Iran in Tokyo so far, he won the first gold medal for Iran in the 10-meter air pistol.
Needless to say, there was a massive community uproar…
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is facing the heat after allowing this to happen. International critics are accusing Javad Foroughi of being a member of the IRGC, a powerful ideological Iranian military branch that answers directly to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
President Trump designated the IRGC as a terrorist group in 2019; with a history of violence in Iran and involvement in other foreign conflicts, this is the first time the US has made a proclamation of this magnitude against a branch of another nation’s official government.
In the past, the IRGC has allied with other terrorist organizations such as the radical Palestinian Hamas organization and the Lebanese Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah. They have also supported Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s attacks on anti-government protestors in a civil war that’s already claimed more than 380,000 lives.
The activist group United for Navid – named after Iranian wrestler Navid Afkari, who was executed by the state in 2020 after participating in anti-government protests – has also stepped up and called out this mistake.
Foroughi’s gold medal has been deemed a “catastrophe” and several activist groups and international officials have demanded that the IOC investigate the situation.
Other Olympic athletes are also raising their concerns…
Korean veteran shooter Jin Jong-oh told reporters that having an Iranian athlete who was accused of being a terrorist be allowed to compete at the Tokyo games is “absurd and ridiculous.”
Jin Jong-oh is a six-time gold medalist shooter who failed to qualify this year, but he was outraged by Foroughi’s participation, “How can a terrorist win first place? That’s the most absurd and ridiculous thing.”
This is not the first controversy that the IOC has faced this season, they have been receiving criticism after criticism and major protest after allowing China to host the 2022 “Genocide Olympics”.
What is supposedly a coveted honor among the countries chosen to host, is being tarnished by the wrongdoings of the countries involved and for some reason the IOC is just pretending that nothing is wrong with that.
