A fifth member of the Iranian women’s national football team who had accepted a refugee visa to remain in Australia has left the country, the Australian government said on Monday.
The player’s departure just before midnight on Sunday leaves two of the original seven team members in Australia, the office of Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said.
Iranian authorities hailed the women’s change of heart as a victory against Australia and U.S. President Donald Trump. The Iranian diaspora in Australia blames 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 accepted humanitarian visas to stay in Australia before the rest of the Iranian delegation flew from Sydney to Kuala Lumpur on March 10.
Another changed her mind later and left Australia.
The rest of the team has remained in Kuala Lumpur since leaving Australia.
Assistant 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 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 from 2018 to 2020, said “winning the propaganda war” overshadowed the women’s well-being.
“The high stakes made the Iranian regime sit up and take notice and try to force their hand in response, in my opinion,” Moore-Gilbert told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.
“But it wasn’t necessarily predictable that this story would explode and become the international news it became. But I think, in this case, if these women had sought asylum discreetly without all this publicity, it’s possible that Islamic Republic officials, as they have in the past with other Iranian athletes who defected… would simply have allowed it to happen,” she added.
The Iranian news agency Tasnim said that after the three left Australia on Saturday, they were “returning to the warm embrace of their family and homeland”.
Concerns for 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 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 failure for Trump”.
Some members of the Iranian diaspora in Australia accused the support staff member who initially accepted asylum and then left Australia on Saturday of spreading Iranian government propaganda to her teammates via text messages.
Thistlethwaite said there is no evidence to support the theory that the support staff member persuaded others to leave. All those who remained in Australia after the team departed were “genuine asylum seekers,” he said.
Thistlethwaite said the women were taken to an “undisclosed safe destination” as soon as they decided to stay in Australia.
“They were able to communicate with family and others. I understand some of them contacted the Iranian embassy here in Australia. We can’t cut off their communications,” Thistlethwaite said.
The embassy in the national capital, Canberra, continues to have staff, despite the Australian government expelling the ambassador last year.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese cut diplomatic ties with Iran in August, after announcing that intelligence agents had concluded the Revolutionary Guard had directed firebombings at 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 little information and had to react to the circumstances,” Razmara said. “I’m surprised they decided to go, but actually I’m not surprised because I appreciate the pressures they are facing.”
Source: npr.org