TEHRAN, Iran — The first mixed soccer game — females vs. males — since the 1979 Islamic revolution led to swift punishment Monday, as an Iranian soccer club said it had suspended three officials involved and handed out fines of up to $5,000. Iran's strict Islamic rules ban any physical contact between unrelated men and women, and Iranian women are even banned from attending soccer games when male teams play. (...) The youth team beat the women 7-0 in a game Vatan-e-Emrooz described as 'historic.' Video clips on cell phones were used as evidence against the suspended officials, who initially denied the game was held, the paper said. The report said the game was held at Marqoobkar stadium in south Tehran. Mixed games for soccer, called football in Iran, were virtually unheard of even before the Islamic revolution. Kamran Khatibi, a soccer writer at Kayhan sports daily, said he doesn't remember a "football game ever having been played between women and men in Iran — not even during Shah Reza Pahlavi's era."
