{"id":549311,"date":"2026-03-20T16:15:15","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T16:15:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/549311\/"},"modified":"2026-03-20T16:15:15","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T16:15:15","slug":"soccer-star-mehdi-taremi-not-leaving-greek-club-to-defend-iran-agent-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/549311\/","title":{"rendered":"Soccer star Mehdi Taremi not leaving Greek club to defend Iran, agent says"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Soccer<\/p>\n

[Reuters]<\/p>\n

Iranian soccer player Mehdi Taremi, who plays for Greek Super League club Olympiakos, is not leaving \u200bthe club to return to his country amid \u200cthe US-Israeli war on Iran, his agent has said.<\/p>\n

The US-based Iran human rights group HRANA said on Thursday that more than 3,100 people had \u200bbeen killed in Iran since the US-Israeli attacks began \u200bon February 28.<\/p>\n

A social media post in early March \u2060claimed that Taremi was leaving the club \u201cto return to \u200bhis country to stand with the army leadership and military \u200bcommand in order to take up arms and defend the Islamic Republic of Iran\u201d.<\/p>\n

However, Taremi\u2019s agent Federico Pastorello said in an Instagram story in \u200bearly March the \u201cstatements attributed to Mehdi Taremi have been \u200bcirculating that do not reflect the reality of the situation.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added that \u200cTaremi \u2060was focused on his work in Athens and encouraged the public to avoid \u201cout-of-context interpretations or inaccurate reconstructions\u201d, without elaborating further.<\/p>\n

Pastorello told Reuters that the narrative about Taremi leaving his \u200bGreek club to \u200breturn to \u2060Iran to fight was \u201cabsolutely fake news\u201d.<\/p>\n

The soccer player remains active in the Super League Greece, \u200bplaying in the Olympiakos-Crete match on March 14.<\/p>\n

Olympiakos and \u200bthe \u2060Iranian Football Association did not respond to a request for comment. [Reuters]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[Reuters] Iranian soccer player Mehdi Taremi, who plays for Greek Super League club Olympiakos, is not leaving \u200bthe…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":549312,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,26208,5897,92982,714,561,82],"class_list":["post-549311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-foreign-affairs","tag-iran","tag-olympiakos","tag-politics","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=549311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549311\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/549312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=549311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=549311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=549311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}