[Reuters]
Iranian soccer player Mehdi Taremi, who plays for Greek Super League club Olympiakos, is not leaving the club to return to his country amid the US-Israeli war on Iran, his agent has said.
The US-based Iran human rights group HRANA said on Thursday that more than 3,100 people had been killed in Iran since the US-Israeli attacks began on February 28.
A social media post in early March claimed that Taremi was leaving the club “to return to his country to stand with the army leadership and military command in order to take up arms and defend the Islamic Republic of Iran”.
However, Taremi’s agent Federico Pastorello said in an Instagram story in early March the “statements attributed to Mehdi Taremi have been circulating that do not reflect the reality of the situation.”
He added that Taremi was focused on his work in Athens and encouraged the public to avoid “out-of-context interpretations or inaccurate reconstructions”, without elaborating further.
Pastorello told Reuters that the narrative about Taremi leaving his Greek club to return to Iran to fight was “absolutely fake news”.
The soccer player remains active in the Super League Greece, playing in the Olympiakos-Crete match on March 14.
Olympiakos and the Iranian Football Association did not respond to a request for comment. [Reuters]