Bluesky

The Israeli state’s genocidal assault against the people of Gaza now appears to be the first installment in an ongoing series. The next episode is what the United States and Israel are doing to Lebanon and Iran. It’s not just the relentless bombings and missile launches with little regard for civilian life that’s so reminiscent of the war on Gaza. It’s not just the slaughtering of children followed by easily debunked denials. (The casual mendacity of both governments is jaw-dropping.) It’s not the assassinations of governmental and religious leaders. It’s the attempt to kill hope.

A source of hope and joy in Iran—as in Palestine—has always been organized sports. In Iran, soccer, wrestling (where Iran has achieved global acclaim), and volleyball are three of the main sporting ventures in which Iran competes internationally. Yet it’s difficult to play—and by extension impossible for a child to have dreams of athletic glory—when the sports infrastructure is destroyed. As I’ve pointed out for over a decade, Israel has long targeted sport facilities and athletes in Gaza. The logic is that if you kill the joy that comes with leisure pursuits and extracurricular activities, you kill the will to resist.

In yet another echo of Gaza, on March 5, one of the first bombing targets in Iran was the historic Azadi Sports Complex in Tehran. Perhaps the most iconic sports facility in the Middle East, Azadi has played host to many of the most storied moments in Iranian athletic history, including a 1998 World Cup qualifier match against Australia played in front of 128,000 people. The Azadi indoor facility, which holds 12,000 and is a central locale for basketball, martial arts, and volleyball, is now a smoldering husk.

Azadi had been a tourist attraction and the site for countless national and international soccer matches, not to mention the setting for Iran’s 2025 victory that clinched an appearance in this year’s World Cup, although their scheduled matches now do not seem likely to occur.

The stadium was held in high enough international regard that it was the centerpiece of Iran’s bid to host the 1984 Olympics. (A bid that was scuttled after the 1979 Iranian Revolution.) Alireza Sohrabian, president of Iran’s Rowing Federation, said, “The destruction of sports, educational, and healthcare spaces is explicitly forbidden by the Red Cross in wartime, yet today we witnessed a direct attack on a sports venue at Azadi stadium.” Ahmad Donyamali, Iran’s sports minister, called the attacks a “war crime.”

Azadi holds a grand place in the Iranian imagination, but it’s about more than just the games. Azadi stadium has also been a critical symbol of the women’s movement in Iran. For four decades, women had been banned from the facility, but their fight for “fresh air” and a chance to show their love for sports became a symbol of the reform movement. In 2018, the ban finally ended, and a set number of women could attend the Asian Champions League men’s final in which the Iranian team Persepolis played Japan’s Kashima Antlers. Since then, Iranian women have further opened up the sports world—and Azadi—to their own athletic dreams. Now Azadi—that symbol, that point of pride in social progress—is gone.

The attack on Azadi stadium was not a stray bomb or an isolated incident. The New York Times has reported that “several” sports and youth facilities have been hit since Israel and the US launched this war. This includes a bombing that was initially denied by the United States but was confirmed by the Times in which a strike killed 18 boys and girls in a volleyball match in the southwest city of Lamerd. 

This is straight from the script that Israel used in its razing of Gaza: You erase the idea of play, the idea of joy, the idea of even being children. Trying to kill hope is a monstrous act, and we are living in a time of monsters—something that’s clear every time we hold our breaths before a news story about the latest bombing, the latest civilian deaths, the latest war crimes. Gaza was the first livestreamed genocide. We must not allow the tactics tried there to become the new normal.