Iranian-born judoka Saeid Mollaei has won a silver medal for Mongolia at the Tokyo Olympics after a turbulent 24 months that saw him first flee the Islamic Republic, then face down its officials in a courtroom.
On Tuesday, July 27 Mollaei excelled in the men's 81kg event, beating Kazakhstan’s Didar Khamza, Azerbaijan’s Murad Fatiyev, Georgian competitor Tatu Grigalashvili and Shamil Borchashvili from Austria, finally coming second only to Japan’s Takanori Nagase.
The last time Mollaei stepped onto a judo mat in Japan was in August 2019, when as a member of the Iranian national team, he was forced to lose in the semifinal of the World Championships so as not to face an Israeli opponent. The Islamic Republic does not allow Iranian athletes to compete against Israelis.
After that incident, though, Mollaei left Iran for good. He first applied for asylum in Germany and was ultimately granted a special citizenship from the president of Mongolia. Iranian media outlets have since branded him a “traitor” and a “Zionist tool” – but in the end, it has been Iran’s loss.
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“He has no right. Make him understand this. My position, the position of Saleh Amiri [the president of Iran’s National Olympic Committee] and the position of the minister [Sports Minister Masoud Soltanifar] is that he has no right to compete. In these circumstances, the regime’s position must not be questioned. Make him understand that under no circumstances does he have the right to compete. If he does, he will have to suffer the consequences.”
The above is part of a covertly-recorded conversation held between Arash Mir-Esmaili, president of the Iranian Judo Federation, and the coaches of Iran’s national team at the World Judo Championships in 2019. It came to light earlier this year, around 20 months after that fateful event in Japan.
In the recording, Arash Mir-Esmaili, who owes much of his career to performative animosity towards Israel and his supposed devotion to what he called “the regime’s position”, was conveying the orders of higher-ups who had barred Saeed Mollaei from facing an Israeli competitor.
That summer, at a time when Mollaei who held the top international rank at 81kg judo, he did indeed lose to Belgium’s Matthias Casse, deliberately taking himself out of the running to face the Israeli fighter Sagi Muki. But in the aftermath, he chose to take a public stand.
His surprise request for asylum in Germany was first reported on August 30, 2019 by the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun. Marius Vizer, president of the International Judo Federation (IJF), told the paper that Mollaei had indeed lost intentionally. Vizer also said that Mollaei feared he and his family would be subjected to violence at the hands of the Islamic Republic if he had gone ahead and faced Muki. High-level Iranian officials were indeed later found to have been involved in his case.
“Lose For Your Country!”
In September 2019, after Saeid Mollaei went public about the pressure placed on him to throw the match in Tokyo, the IJF formally suspended the Iranian Judo Federation.
"Welcome to the family," it posted on its official website in November afterMollaei was granted asylum by Germany. His decision to defect was praised by the IJF as “a sign of respect for and dedication to moral principles”. The next month, Mollaei was offered – and accepted – citizenship by Khaltmaagiin Battulga, the president of Mongolia.
Fars News Agency, affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards, gleefully reported that Mollaei had lost the chance to compete in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics because he had lost in the World Judo Championships in China. And Varzesh 3, another media outlet affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards, quoted Arash Mir-Esmaili in calling Mollaei a “traitor”.
Despite this torrent of ill-will, he and two other former Iranian judokas bravely took the stand against the Iranian in September 2020, when Iran’s bitter complaint against the IJF finally came before the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Switzerland.
When the appointed date arrived, so serious had the threats against Mollaei become that he arrived in court to give evidence on the regime’s interference in sport flanked by a Swiss government-appointed security detail.
Vahid Sarlak, another exiled Iranian judoka who also spoke out against the Islamic Republic, later told Deutsche Welle that the Islamic Republic had not only tried to heap pressure on Mollaei not to testify, but officials had even offered him a bribe.
In the end, contrary to Fars News Agency’s prediction, Saeid Mollaei reached the Olympics and won a silver medal while the Iranian Judo Federation is still barred from international contests.
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