{"id":16666,"date":"2018-09-28T17:25:45","date_gmt":"2018-09-28T17:25:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=16666"},"modified":"2018-09-28T17:25:45","modified_gmt":"2018-09-28T17:25:45","slug":"iranian-mayor-apologises-over-billboard-showing-israeli-troops","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=16666","title":{"rendered":"Iranian mayor apologises over billboard showing Israeli troops"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"body-200771816342556199\" readability=\"105.37369727\">\n<p class=\"speakable\">An Iranian mayor apologised for a billboard in his city that mistakenly featured Israeli soldiers while attempting to mark the Iran-Iraq war.<\/p>\n<p class=\"speakable\">The billboard was installed in Shiraz showing three male soldiers standing on a rocky outcrop next to a quote from an epic Persian poem,\u00a0<span>the online conservative news agency Tasnim reported on Friday.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"speakable\">But the shot was actually a photoshopped picture of Israel Defense Forces with a female soldier from the original having been cropped out.<\/p>\n<p>The banner was pulled down from the southwestern city on Wednesday night and the mayor issued an apology the next day.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\" readability=\"5.56485355649\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">PR director of Shiraz municipality arrested over billboard photoshoped with a pic of Israeli soldiers to commemorate &#8216;Holy Defense Week,&#8217; i.e. <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Iran?src=hash&#038;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#Iran<\/a>-Iraq War <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/nK6pOo2rbC\">pic.twitter.com\/nK6pOo2rbC<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Sobhan Hassanvand (@Hassanvand) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Hassanvand\/status\/1045657160745668608?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 28, 2018<\/a>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8220;This mistake of putting up such a despicable banner during the sacred defence week is unforgivable,&#8221; Mayor Heydar Eskandarpour was quoted as saying.<\/p>\n<p>Iran commonly refers to the brutal eight-year war with Iraq as &#8220;the sacred defence&#8221;. In recent days, the country has been marking the start of the conflict that began on September 22, 1980.<\/p>\n<p>An estimated 680,000 people died.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In addition to apologising to Shiraz&#8217;s pious and noble people, I ask the authorities to investigate the roots of this suspicious act and promptly report to the people,&#8221; the mayor said.<\/p>\n<p>Two public relation officials at the municipality were later fired on Thursday night, according to news agency Fars.<\/p>\n<p>There were also reports that arrests were made in connection to the controversy, but Al Jazeera could not independently confirm the news.<\/p>\n<p>Iranian social media was abuzz with heated reactions to the controversy.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;M16 guns, straps, clothes, helmets: all clearly belong to Zionists. The best I can say is that you did something idiotic,&#8221; wrote a Twitter user identified as @mhrezaa.<\/p>\n<p>Another Iranian user @masoudasadi67 also called for the swift punishment of &#8220;those who committed such a heinous act&#8221;.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An Iranian mayor apologised for a billboard in his city that mistakenly featured Israeli soldiers while attempting to mark the Iran-Iraq war. The billboard was installed in Shiraz showing three male soldiers standing on a rocky outcrop next to a quote from an epic Persian poem,\u00a0the online conservative news agency Tasnim reported on Friday. But&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":16667,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16666\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}