A fifth member of Iran’s women’s national football team, who had accepted a refugee visa to remain in Australia, left the country, the Australian government reported on Monday.
The player’s departure, which occurred just before midnight on Sunday, leaves only two of the seven original team members in Australia, said the office of Minister for Home Affairs Tony Burke.
Iranian authorities hailed the women’s change of heart as a victory against Australia and US President Donald Trump. The Iranian diaspora in Australia attributes the development to pressure from Tehran.
Burke said on Sunday that two players and one support staff member left Sydney for Malaysia on Saturday.
The Iranian team arrived in Australia for the Women’s Asian Cup last month, before the Middle East war began on February 28.
Initially, six players and one support staff member — from a squad of 26 athletes — accepted humanitarian visas to stay in Australia, before the rest of the Iranian delegation flew from Sydney to Kuala Lumpur on March 10.
Another member changed her mind later and left Australia.
The rest of the team has remained in Kuala Lumpur since leaving Australia.
Deputy Immigration Minister Matt Thistlethwaite described the women’s situation in Australia as a “very complex situation”.
“We have been working very, very closely with them, but obviously this is a very complex situation. These are deeply personal decisions, and the government respects the decisions of those who chose to return. And we continue to offer support to the two who remain,” Thistlethwaite told Sky News television.
“They are receiving all the support from the Australian government and, indeed, from the diaspora community to stay here and settle in Australia,” he added.
Kylie Moore-Gilbert, a political scientist at Sydney’s Macquarie University — who spent more than two years in Iranian prisons on espionage charges between 2018 and 2020 — said that “winning the propaganda war” had overshadowed the women’s well-being. “What was at stake was so high that it put the Iranian regime on maximum alert, paying attention and trying to force a reaction from the other side, in my opinion,” Moore-Gilbert told the *Australian Broadcasting Corp.*.
“But it wasn’t necessarily predictable that this story would gain so much traction and become the international case it became. However, I think in this specific case — if these women had sought asylum discreetly, without all this publicity around them — it’s possible that the authorities of the Islamic Republic would have acted as they have in the past with other Iranian athletes who defected: simply allowed it to happen,” she added.
The Iranian news agency *Tasnim* reported, after the three women left Australia on Saturday, that they were “returning to the warm embrace of their families and their homeland”.
Concerns about the team’s safety in Iran grew when the players did not sing the Iranian national anthem before their first match.
The Australian government was urged to help the women by Iranian groups based in Australia and by Trump himself.
The Iranian news agency described the women’s return to the team as the “shameful failure of the American-Australian project and another defeat for Trump”.
Some members of the Iranian diaspora in Australia accused the support staff member — who initially sought asylum but then left Australia on Saturday — of spreading Iranian government propaganda among her teammates via text messages.
Thistlethwaite said there was no evidence to support the theory that the support staff member had persuaded the others to leave. All those who stayed in Australia after the team left were “genuine asylum seekers,” he said.
Thistlethwaite said the women were taken to an undisclosed “safe location” as soon as they decided to stay in Australia.
“They were able to communicate with family and others. I’m aware that some of them even contacted the Iranian embassy here in Australia. We can’t stop them from communicating,” Thistlethwaite said.
The embassy, located in the national capital, Canberra, remains operational with its full staff, despite the Australian government expelling the ambassador last year. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese severed diplomatic ties with Iran in August, after announcing that intelligence agencies had concluded that the Revolutionary Guard directed arson attacks on a *kosher* food company in Sydney and the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne in 2024.
Vice president of the Australia-Iran Society of Victoria, Kambiz Razmara, said the women who accepted asylum were under pressure from the Tehran regime.
“They had to make decisions in the heat of the moment, with very little information, and had to react to the circumstances,” Razmara said. “I’m surprised they decided to leave, but actually I’m not surprised, because I understand the pressures they are facing.”
Source: npr.org