Iranians give U.S. wrestlers warm welcome amid tension
TEHRAN, Iran – U.S. wrestlers were welcomed to Iran on Tuesday with bouquets of pink and white flowers at a time of increasing tensions between the two countries, recalling the days before Tehran’s reformers were defeated by its current hard-line leadership.
The Americans, wearing jackets emblazoned with “USA Wrestling,” were given the warm greeting by girls in traditional dresses at an airport in the southern city of Bandar Abbas.
The 14 wrestlers are to participate Thursday and Friday in the Persian Gulf Cup, also known as the Takhti Cup, the top wrestling tournament in Iran, where the sport has been a national obsession for centuries.
In a small – but, for Iranians, significant – goodwill gesture, the American wrestlers were exempted from having their fingerprints taken as they entered the country. Iran imposed the fingerprint requirement on Americans after the U.S. imposed a similar rule on visiting Iranians. In 2003, Iran boycotted the world freestyle wrestling championships in New York because of the U.S. policy, seen as humiliating.
It is the first time that Americans have participated in the competition since President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to power in 2005, further souring already bad relations between Tehran and Washington.
Despite the courteous welcome, it was clear the Iranian government was not touting the U.S. visit as an attempt to bridge their differences – unlike Ahmadinejad’s predecessor, reformist President Mahmoud Khatami.
Iranian media gave low-key coverage of the wrestlers Tuesday, with government-run newspapers, radio and television mentioning their arrival, but making no commentary.
The visit came on the same day a U.S. aircraft carrier group was to start for the region in what Washington has said is a show of strength directed at Tehran.
Bandar Abbas lies on the northern side of the Strait of Hormuz, the entrance to the Gulf, which is patrolled by U.S. warships. American battleships can be seen from the city.
President Bush has accused Iran and its ally Syria of fueling bloodshed in Iraq and vowed the U.S. military would prevent them from supplying militants in the war-torn country. Bush branded Iran part of the “axis of evil” in 2002 after the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States.
Khatami, who was president from 1997 to 2005, encouraged cultural and sports exchanges with the United States to bring down the “wall of mistrust” between the two nations.
In 1998, a U.S. wrestling team became the first U.S. sports team to visit Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution when it participated in the Persian Gulf Cup. In that year’s tournament, about 12,000 fans in Tehran erupted in applause as a U.S. wrestler waved the Iranian flag after winning a silver medal.
Khatami and the reformists favored improved relations with the United States, which cut off diplomatic ties during the hostage crisis after the 1979 revolution that overthrew the U.S.-backed shah.