(JTA) – Thousands of Persian speakers on social media demanded that the world soccer federation punish Iran after it banned two athletes from the national soccer team for participating in a match against Israelis. The players, Masoud Shojaei, 33, the captain of the national team, and Ehsan Haji Safi, 27, one of Iran’s most promising players, were banned Thursday, August 10 for playing for their Greek club team, Panionios, in a home game last week in Athens against Israel’s Maccabi Tel Aviv. “It is certain that Masoud Shojaei and Ehsan Haji Safi will never be invited to join the national football team because they violated the red line,” Mohammad Reza Davarzani, Iran’s deputy sports minister said Thursday on Iranian state television, the New York Times reported.

The move prompted thousands of speakers of Persian, including Iranians living in the Islamic Republic or beyond, to call on the FIFA soccer federation to impose sanctions on Iran for the move, according to Omid Memarian, a New York-based journalist. Among them was Vali Nasr, a well-known Iranian-born Middle East analyst and scholar, argued on Twitter that the Iranian players were actually bound contractually to play against the Israeli athletes as part of their engagement for the Greek team, and therefore should not be punished by Iran.

The Iranian government does not recognize the state of Israel, which Iranian officials repeatedly have vowed to destroy. The country’s Islamic government prohibits Iranian athletes from competing against Israeli athletes in any contest or tournament, including the Olympics. Critics in Iran say the ban on competing against Israel has hurt the development of Iranian athletes, forcing them to forfeit or pull out of competitions in which they might face Israeli athletes. But hard-liners in the republic insist that ideology trumps sports. In 2012 Iranian judo champion Javad Mahjoub withdrew from the London Olympic Games in what was seen as a ploy to keep from competing against an Israeli.

Iran’s Parliament denounced the two soccer players. “Agreeing to play in a game against athletes of a regime that has given humanity nothing other than occupation, murder, aggression and betrayal is disrespectful of the rights of thousands of martyrs and those displaced and affected by the occupying Zionist regime,” a spokesman for the committee told the Mehr news agency.

CAP: Iran’s Masoud Shojaei