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| Milad Beigi is an Iranian-born naturalized Azerbaijani taekwondo practitioner who won a bronze medal at the 2016 Summer Olympics. |
After the Iranian athlete lost to Milad Beigi—a taekwondo practitioner of Iranian origin representing Azerbaijan in the Olympics—Mohammadreza Pouladgar, head of the Iranian Taekwondo Federation, labeled Beigi a mercenary in an interview, essentially portraying him as a traitorous foreigner. Part of this reaction surely stems from the sting of defeat, especially when the victor represents Azerbaijan—a fact that alone is enough to provoke Iranian ethnonationalist sensitivities. But there’s another dimension to this story—one that Pouladgar seems eager to deflect from through scapegoating.
To an Iranian audience that benefits from the idea of Iranian-ness, such remarks may simply reinforce Pouladgar's patriotism and Beigi’s supposed betrayal. For such an audience, Iranian-ness is a sacred virtue, not something that can be traded or sold. And anyone who exchanges it for money is deemed a mercenary, a foreigner, a traitor. But for many others living in this country, such virtue feels hollow and meaningless—not because they don’t hold patriotism in high regard, but because they lack any uplifting or pride-inspiring image of “the homeland.” Patriotism is an acquired feeling, not an innate one. It’s not some genetic inheritance passed down from our ancestors, nor is it a natural human instinct. It is merely a sense of belonging—one that might emerge after years of living in a land.
There’s a school of thought that says civic virtues flourish with active citizenship. And when all avenues for such citizenship are blocked, those virtues begin to wither. And once withered, they become tradable—for money or anything else. By that logic, it's not far-fetched to claim that patriotism itself requires caretakers—those who can cultivate and nurture it.
Justice and freedom: the former gives everyone an equal stake in the homeland, and the latter fosters the joy and motivation for personal growth. In the absence of these two, patriotism dies. Or if it exists at all, it mutates into self-interest and personal gain.
Under such conditions, expecting a deep sense of national belonging from the majority of Iran's population is a vain hope. They have no share in this land, nor any viable path to realize their potential. When the price of freedom and justice is prison; when billions from oil revenues end up in the inflated paychecks of a few families, while people in oil-rich provinces lack clean drinking water and domestic gas—and their share is reduced to the dust storms that have wrecked their natural habitat; when economic hardship drives a girl to prostitution, or a child in a remote village is married off to a man old enough to be her father for a sum of money; when racial injustice and linguistic arrogance are daily realities for non-Persian ethnic groups, and Iran's neighbors are the constant target of Iranian racism; when discrimination reigns and you can buy a kidney, a cornea, a vote, a woman, or even justice with money—then Iranian patriotism becomes exactly what it appears to be: a joke.
The country has become the private property of those in power. The result is a divided society of insiders and outsiders, legitimate and illegitimate citizens. Naturally, for the outsiders, for the so-called illegitimates, the homeland exists somewhere beyond the fenced-off property of the ruling elite. It lies outside the narrow, exclusionary idea of Iranian-ness imposed by nationalists. It's in a place where the outsiders and dispossessed might finally reclaim their lost dignity.
We all know this: in this land, to sit at the table of power, one must likely sacrifice a few, praise authority, and conform to the dominant values. So how is it that someone whose patriotism is so clearly aligned with self-interest dares to call an athlete a mercenary, a sellout, a foreigner?
Sure, we might actually agree with Pouladgar on one point: that Beigi is no longer his compatriot. The difference is in the reason why. Pouladgar sees Beigi's representation of another nation’s flag as the betrayal. But to us, Beigi and those like him were excluded from Pouladgar’s definition of “Iranian” long ago—when all they received in return for their identity was injustice. That may well be their reason for choosing another country, one that evokes a far more tangible sense of homeland—enough to make them stand under its flag, even against Iran’s.