{"id":78354,"date":"2019-12-25T18:48:11","date_gmt":"2019-12-25T23:48:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/persian-heritage.com\/wordpress\/?p=78354"},"modified":"2019-12-25T18:48:11","modified_gmt":"2019-12-25T23:48:11","slug":"iranian-chess-champ-to-renounce-his-citizenship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/2019\/12\/25\/iranian-chess-champ-to-renounce-his-citizenship\/","title":{"rendered":"Iranian Chess Champ to Renounce His Citizenship"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-78357\" src=\"http:\/\/persian-heritage.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/IraqWEB.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"290\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/IraqWEB.jpg 290w, https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/IraqWEB-150x103.jpg 150w, https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/IraqWEB-24x17.jpg 24w, https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/IraqWEB-36x25.jpg 36w, https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/IraqWEB-48x33.jpg 48w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 290px) 100vw, 290px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>VOA &#8211; The top-rated Iranian chess champion says he will not play for Iran in an upcoming tournament and is ready to renounce his citizenship because of a ban on competing against Israeli players. Alireza Firouzja is &#8220;currently living in France&#8230;and may want to play under the French or U.S. flag&#8221; the head of the Iranian chess federation told Tehran&#8217;s ISNA news agency, adding that the 16 year-old Alireza &#8220;wants to change his nationality.&#8221; There has been no reaction from Iran to Alireza&#8217;s apparent decision to give up his citizenship. There has also been no word from Alireza&#8217;s family. Iranian authorities announced they were pulling out of the upcoming World Rapid &amp; Blitz tournament in Moscow after two other Iranian players competed against Israelis in an earlier match.<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->But Alireza objected to the Iranian withdrawal. He is Iran&#8217;s top-ranked player and the world&#8217;s number two ranked junior player.<\/p>\n<p>Iranian officials have called on all Iranian athletes to refrain from competing against Israelis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>VOA &#8211; The top-rated Iranian chess champion says he will not play for Iran in an upcoming tournament and is ready to renounce his citizenship because of a ban on competing against Israeli players. Alireza Firouzja is &#8220;currently living in France&#8230;and may want to play under the French or U.S. flag&#8221; the head of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.2","language":"en","enabled_languages":["fa","en"],"languages":{"fa":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false},"en":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78354\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}