The newly appointed governor of Iran's East Azerbaijan province, Zeinolabedin Khorram-Razavi known as Abedin Khorram, was slapped on the face during his inauguration ceremony in Tabriz on Saturday.
The footage of the incident, which was broadcast on state television, shows a man approaching him as he is delivering his speech on the podium and slapping him hard in the face. Seconds later, plainclothes security agents walk onto the stage and apprehend the assailant.
Khorram later returns to the stage and tells the audience that he does not know his attacker, and says that he forgives him.
“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,” the governor said. “More than 10 times, they would hold a loaded gun to my head. I consider him on a par with those enemies but I will forgive him,” he added.
The motive behind this attack is still unclear, although several reports have suggested it was due to a personal dispute, despite Khorram claiming he did not know his attacker.
Brig Gen Abedin Khorram is the former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' (IRGC) Ashoura division.
Reportedly, his attacker, a fellow member of the IRGC, had also served in the Ashoura Corps, according to a state-run news agency. He was allegedly fired on the orders of the former IRGC commander.
A report by another local Iranian news agency says the man who slapped the governor was upset because his wife had received a coronavirus vaccination from a male nurse instead of a female nurse.
Abedin Khorram was nominated to serve as governor of Iran's north-western province of East Azerbaijan by president Ebrahim Raisi's government.
According to the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the former IRGC commander was among 48 Iranians who were held hostage in Syria in 2013. They were later released in exchange for 2,130 rebels.
In March, a video circulated online showing a printout of an account allegedly belonging to Abedin Khorram's wife, Nahid Hosseinpour Heykalabad. She had left her bank card at a grocery store and the shopkeeper used it on camera to get a printout of her bank's balance.
Her account's balance was revealed to be over 67,000 billion tomans, roughly $2.68 billion at the exchange rate then. The IRGC commander's wife later claimed on state television that the amount shown was false, after which no follow-up investigations were done.
