The council leader in the Iranian city of Shiraz has ordered an investigation after Israeli soldiers were featured on a billboard commemorating the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.

The billboard used a photoshopped picture showing the backs of three male soldiers standing on a rocky outcrop.

After it was put up in a square in central Shiraz last week, people noticed the men were wearing IDF uniforms and carrying M16 rifles.

It also emerged that a female soldier was cropped out of the original photo.

One Twitter user, @mhrezaa, wrote: “I felt burnt when I saw this billboard in the middle of Sacred Defence Week.”
“M16 guns, straps, clothes, hat on their shoulders; all of these belong to Zionists. In the best case scenario I can say you did something idiotic.”

The Israeli foreign ministry’s Persian Twitter account also mocked the billboard, and noted that Iranians had posted images showing it being taken down overnight.

پس از انتشار خبر استفاده تامل برانگیز از تصویر سربازان اسرائیلی در بیلبورد هفته دفاع مقدس در شیراز، این بیلبورد شبانه پایین کشیده شد. pic.twitter.com/B932M6sPKa

— اسرائیل به فارسی (@IsraelPersian) September 27, 2018

On Thursday morning the head of the city council, Seyyed Ahmad Dastgheyb, ordered cultural officials to carry out an urgent investigation, local media reported.

If it was confirmed a picture of soldiers of the “usurper Zionist regime” had been used, he said, it would be “necessary to deal seriously with those responsible”.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)