NASHVILLE, Tenn. – U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) wrote the following op-ed in OutKick questioning why Iran – a country plotting to assassinate President Donald Trump – is allowed to compete in the Olympic Games, which celebrate international unity, cooperation, and peace.

Why Is Iran At The Olympics?

Senator Marsha Blackburn

OutKick

Should a country enjoy the honor of participating in the Olympic Games — long defined by its aspirations of fostering international unity, cooperation, and peace — while plotting the assassination of a former U.S. president?

As more than three dozen athletes carried the banner of the Islamic Republic of Iran on Friday during the Opening Ceremony of the Paris Summer Olympics, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) made its answer clear: Absolutely.

While Iran’s athletes have been practicing to compete in everything from archery and canoeing to weightlifting and wrestling, the authoritarian regime has been busy with a much more vile effort: conspiring to murder former President Donald Trump, a revelation from U.S. authorities that came just days after the failed assassination attempt on the president in Butler, Pennsylvania.

While deeply troubling, the Iranian plot, which the regime so far denies, should come as no surprise. For years, the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism has plotted assassinations against senior Trump administration officials, including former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Advisor John Bolton, resulting in federal charges against a member of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

IOC allows Iran to participate in Olympics

What is shocking, however, is that the IOC would allow Iran to participate in the Games. As the organizing body makes clear in its Olympic Charter, the goal of the Games is to “promote a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity” and respect for “universal fundamental ethical principles.”

Even assassination plots aside, there is no doubt that the ayatollahs in Tehran — whose regime systematically oppresses women and religious minorities and executes political dissidents — have struggled to uphold these principles.

In fact, many of the regime’s most high-profile victims are Iranian athletes.

In 2020, the regime executed 27-year-old Navid Afkari after torturing the wrestler, who spoke out against the Islamic Republic, into confessing to the murder of an Iranian security guard. Two years later, Iranian agents arrested rock climber Marjan Jangjou, who remains missing, after the athlete allegedly participated in street protests. And last year, Iran hanged karate champion Mohammad Mehdi Karami — who had the Olympic rings tattooed on his arm — after he allegedly participated in anti-regime demonstrations.

Tragically, Navid, Marjan, and Mohammad are among dozens of Iranian athletes who have faced persecution by the regime.

At the same time, Tehran has exported its violence across the region, attacking U.S. service members with drone strikes and organizing Hamas’s barbaric Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

But when I pressed the IOC to exclude Iran from the Olympic Games over its blatant violation of the Olympic Charter, the committee refused, arguing in a letter that the National Olympic Committee of Iran — not the Iranian government — is bound by the charter and remains “in good standing with the IOC.”

Noted: Authoritarian regimes can abuse, torture, and murder their citizens and athletes with impunity — just as long as their National Olympic Committee doesn’t participate in these evil crimes.

The IOC also argued that barring Iran from the Olympics would unfairly exclude Iranian athletes, who are not responsible for their government’s actions, from peaceful competition.

Of course, the IOC knows this is untrue. Although the Olympic committee banned Russia from participating in the Paris Olympics over its devastating invasion of Ukraine, individual Russian athletes are still allowed to compete under a neutral flag and anthem. The same benefit could be extended to Iranian athletes, many of whom already compete in exile under alternative flags.

In fact, Iranian athletes make up nearly 40% of the Refugee Olympic Team, a larger share than any other country. Many others compete under the flags of their adopted countries — including Kimia Alizadeh, Iran’s only female Olympic medalist, who is competing in Paris for Bulgaria.

When Kimia announced in 2020 that she fled Iran, the Olympian said that she was “one of the millions of oppressed women in Iran" and could no longer "sit at the table of hypocrisy, lies, injustice and flattery.”

The International Olympic Committee would do well to follow Kimia’s courageous example.