Nutmeg Radio

Every year, the Iranian Football Federation (FFI) sends out a New Year’s greeting to every national federation that is a member of FIFA … except for “the football federation from the Zionist regime” of course.  This year, however, the FFI made a boo boo.  Mohammad-Manour Azimzadeh, head of the FFI foreign relations office, apparently forgot to take Israel off of his master New Year’s greeting list.  Don’t worry Mohammad, you’re not the first to make this mistake … but from now on make sure you double check your recipient list.  Unfortunately, in the future, it looks like he’ll have to do this check from a different email address because Mr. Azimzadeh has “resigned” in light of this incident.

Amir Navon, head of the Israel Football Association’s (IFA) legal department, was the lucky recipient of the FFI’s New Year’s greeting.  Unsurprisingly, he was surprised.  An IFA spokesperson stated that Navon came into his office asking if he thought it was a mistake.   The spokesperson said he didn’t know, but that a response was in order.  The IFA’s response to the IFF was, “Happy New Year to all the good people of Iran.”  They say they also added a wink and wrote that they hoped Iran would have a happy soccer year.  Good to know that winks are now an accepted form of official correspondence.

In diplomatic relations, there are no empty gestures.  Everything gets interpreted.  Nevertheless, it’s a pretty sad state of affairs when a pleasant New Year’s greeting leads to a resignation.  It doesn’t bode well for the prospect of reconciliation between these two governments when even amicable exchanges are out of order.