For Iran, the Olympic Games involves Persian pride

For Iranian athletes, London is a city that evokes nostalgia. In 1948, when it hosted the Summer Olympics, Iranian athletes came to this city for their first official participation ever at the Olympic games and they returned home with the country's first medal - weightlifter Jafar Salmasi won a weightlifting bronze in the featherweight division.

Sixty-four years on, they have returned to London with hope of adding more to the stack of 48 medals already at home, with good chances of winning in wrestling, weightlifting, and taekwondo.

So far, most of the news surrounding the Iran team is about whether they would compete against the athletes from Israel, Tehran's sworn enemy. With no surprise, it turned out that they won't.

Last week, the head of of the Iranian Olympic committee, Bahram Afsharzadeh, was quoted by news agencies as saying that his country would "follow the sportsmanship and play every country", prompting speculation that Iran would abandon it's long-standing policy and face Israeli athletes for the first time.

Those suggestions were immediately rejected by officials in Tehran and Iran's sports minister, Mohammad Abbasi, stepped in to clarify by saying that "not competing with the Zionist athletes is one of the values and prides of the Iranian athletes and nation". Iran's semi-official Fars news agency said that Afsharzadeh was misquoted.

For Iranian athletes, that's a principle they must follow. Iranian judo champion, Javad Mahjoub, was said by the Iranian authorities to be too sick to attend the games, reportedly suffering from a "critical digestive system infection" but many speculated that his illness could have been an excuse to withdraw him from competing against an Israeli.

"As no Iranian has ever competed with an Israeli, it shows a pressure from above," Ehsan, a Tehran citizen, told the BBC. "Maybe it is the fear that if an athlete takes part in those Games they might be removed from the national team. So they do not compete, even if their competitor is not very strong."

Other Iranian athletes have also been stopped from reaching London 2012. In June, the Iranian women's national football team had to withdraw from a qualifying match for the Olympic games because of their hijab. Fifa rules doomed their dress code, which covered their neck and ears, as unacceptable.

Despite the difficulties, many athletes are competing. The 23-year-old Behdad Salimi, an Iranian weightlifter in the +105 kg category who has won a number of gold medals including at the 2011 World Weightlifting Championships in Paris, is one who many Iranians are watching closely. He's described as the "embodiment – the massive embodiment – of Persian pride".

"Nothing will satisfy me in the Olympics except a gold medal," he told the Christian Science Monitor. "I am going to London to take it and bring it back home. I did not wish just to be an Olympian; my serious desire has been no less than a gold medal."

Hijab complications, however, have not stopped many other Iranian women from competing at the Games. For 25-year-old Neda Shahsavari, it's a defining moment, due to become the first Iranian women to compete in table tennis at the Olympics.

"Expectations are high. It is very difficult, but I will do my best," she told the AFP. For Shahsavari, hijab is apparently no obstacle. "I've been competing dressed like this for more than a decade here at home and in international games. I am accustomed to it."

- THE GUARDIAN