Iran's top rated chess champion has decided not to play for his country, Iranian news agencies reported on Tuesday, in an apparent reaction to Tehran's informal ban on competing against Israeli players.
Alireza Firouzja, the world's second-highest rated junior player, would be the second Iranian sports figure in recent months to try to renounce his citizenship over pressures on Iranian athletes to forego matches with Israeli competitors.
In October, Iran was banned indefinitely from international judo by the sport's world body until it could guarantee that its athletes would be allowed to face Israelis. The move came after an Iranian judoka said he was pressured to drop out of bouts to avoid facing an Israeli athlete.
"Firouzja has made his decision and has told us that he wants to change his nationality," the president of Iran's Chess Federation, Mehrdad Pahlavanzadeh, told the semi-official news agency Tasnim.