Iranian athletes have been dealing with this nightmare: if in an international competition they face a competitor from Israel, they will be told that they have

Iranian athletes have been dealing with this nightmare: if in an international competition they face a competitor from Israel, they will be told that they have to avoid competing. This is part of Iran's Islamic government's symbolic gesture to show that they do not recognize a country by that name, and so their representatives do not compete against them. This has caused a huge amount of damage on these athletes' professional lives. Imagine an Olympic competition, you might be in the right shape to compete in the Olympic only once, and you miss that not by your chance. No officials in Iran take the responsibility of this decision, no one knows what institute forces athletes to abandon their competition, but this continues. Many of top athletes migrate to other countries (usually just stay in the country they are for the competition as refugees, and do not come back with the team, then they move to another country) for a chance to compete free from this restriction.