The new governor of a northwestern Iranian province was on Saturday slapped in the face by an angry man during his inauguration, an unusual breach of security in the Islamic Republic during a ceremony attended by the country’s minister of the interior.
The motive for the attack in Eastern Azerbaijan Province remained unclear, although it targeted a new provincial governor who once served in the country’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard Corps and reportedly had been kidnapped at one point by rebel forces in Syria. One report referred to it as a personal dispute.
Eastern Azerbaijan Governor Abedin Khorram had taken the podium in the provincial capital of Tabriz when the man strode out from offstage and immediately swung at the official.
Photo: AFP / HO / IRANIAN PRESIDENCY
Video aired by state television recorded the gathered crowd gasping in shock, the sound of the slap echoing on the sound system. It took several seconds before plainclothes security forces reached him.
They dragged the man off through a side door, knocking down a curtain. Others rushed up, knocking into each other.
Later footage showed Khorram return to the stage and speak to the unsettled crowd, now all standing up.
“I do not know him, of course, but you should know that, although I did not want to say it, when I was in Syria, I would get whipped by the enemy 10 times a day and would be beaten up,” he said. “More than 10 times, they would hold a loaded gun to my head. I consider him on a par with those enemies, but forgive him.”
Another man on stage shouted: “Death to the hypocrites.”
That is a common chant used against exiled opposition groups and others who oppose the Islamic Republic. Others cried out that Khorram was a “pro-supreme leader governor.”
Although Khorram said that he did not know the man, the Islamic Republic News Agency later described the attacker as a member of the Revolutionary Guard’s Ashoura Corps, which Khorram had overseen.
The agency described the attack as coming due to “personal reasons,” without elaborating. Later, the semiofficial Fars News Agency said the man who slapped the governor had been upset that his wife had received a COVID-19 vaccination from a male nurse, as opposed to a female nurse.
Khorram was nominated by the Iranian legislature to serve as the provincial governor under the government of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, a protege of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Khorram had been among 48 Iranians held hostage in 2013 in Syria and was later released in exchange for about 2,130 rebels, said the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington-based think tank that long has been critical of Iran.
Iran at the time referred to those held as Shiite religious pilgrims.
A US Department of State spokesperson called it “just another example of how Iran continues to provide guidance, expertise, personnel [and] technical capabilities to the Syrian regime.”
The incident also comes amid anger in Iran over its precarious economic situation, despite its support for regional militias and others abroad, including Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Iran’s economy has been hammered since then-US president Donald Trump in 2018 unilaterally withdrew from Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers.
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