November 19, 2021
The new governor general of East Azerbaijan province was slapped in the head during his inauguration by an angry Pasdar officer mad that his wife got a coronavirus vaccination from a male nurse rather than a female nurse.
The new governor general is also a Pasdar officer. Brig. Gen. Abedin Khorram had taken the podium in the provincial capital of Tabriz when his attacker strode across the stage in civilian clothes and raised his arm high. General Khorram didn’t see his attacker and was knocked off balance when the man slammed his open hand down hard on the general’s head.
Video aired by state television recorded the gathered crowd gasping in shock, the sound of the slap echoing on the sound system.
General Khorram recovered his balance. The attacker, a much shorter man, walked toward the general again and the general backed away. The attacker came up and shoved the general backward with both his hands.
Someone then ran in from behind the general, rushing the attacker and pushing him hard. A group of men ran in from the other side of the stage, grabbed the attacker and manhandled him off the stage.
Later footage showed Khorram returning to the stage and speaking to the unsettled crowd, now all standing up.
“I do not know him, of course, but you should know that, although I did not want to say it, when I was in Syria I would get whipped by the enemy 10 times a day and would be beaten up,” he said. “More than 10 times, they would hold a loaded gun to my head. I consider him on a par with those enemies, but forgive him.” Khorram was taken captive in Syria.
The state-run Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) later described the attacker as a member of the Pasdaran’s Ashura Corps, which Khorram had overseen. Some news accounts identified him as a Colonel Ayyub Alizadeh.
The general later said the man who slapped him had been upset that his wife received a coronavirus vaccination from a male nurse, as opposed to a female nurse. Many on social media said they did not believe that. Other news reports said the attacker was angry that the general had blocked a promotion the attacker thought he was due.
News photos of people being vaccinated often show males vaccinating women and women vaccinating males. It has not been an issue—at least until now.
Khorram was among 48 Pasdaran taken hostage off a bus in 2013 in Syria and later released in exchange for some 2,130 rebels, according to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington-based think tank.
Iran had referred to those held as Shiite pilgrims and did not acknowledge that the bus was actually filled with Pasdar officers.