This picture taken on March 8, 2026 reveals Iranian gamers operating in direction of their positions at the beginning of the AFC Ladies’s Asian Cup Australia 2026 soccer match between Iran and the Philippines on the Gold Coast.
STR/AFP/by way of Getty Photos
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MELBOURNE, Australia — A fifth member of the Iranian girls’s soccer workforce who accepted a refugee visa to remain in Australia has left the nation, the Australian authorities mentioned on Monday.
The participant’s departure shortly earlier than midnight on Sunday leaves two of an preliminary seven squad members in Australia, Dwelling Affairs Minister Tony Burke’s workplace mentioned.
The Iranian authorities have welcomed the ladies’s change of coronary heart as a victory in opposition to Australia and U.S. President Donald Trump. The Iranian diaspora in Australia blame strain from Tehran.
Burke reported on Sunday that two gamers and a workforce assist employees member had left Sydney for Malaysia on Saturday.
Iran’s workforce arrived in Australia for the Ladies’s Asian Cup final month, earlier than the conflict within the Center East started on Feb. 28.
Initially, six gamers and a assist employees member from a squad checklist of 26 gamers accepted humanitarian visas to remain in Australia earlier than the remainder of the Iranian contingent flew from Sydney to Kuala Lumpur on March 10.
One other later modified her thoughts and left Australia.
The remainder of the workforce has remained in Kuala Lumpur since they left Australia.
Assistant Immigration Minister Matt Thistlethwaite described the ladies’s plight in Australia as a “very advanced state of affairs.”
“We have been working very, very intently with them, however clearly it is a very advanced state of affairs. These are deeply private choices, and the federal government respects the selections of those who have chosen to return. And we proceed to supply assist to the 2 which might be remaining,” Thistlethwaite informed Sky Information tv.
“They’re being given all of the assist of the Australian authorities and certainly the diaspora group to stay right here and settle in Australia,” he added.
Kylie Moore-Gilbert, a political scientist at Sydney’s Macquarie College who spent greater than two years in Iranian prisons on spying fees from 2018 to 2020, mentioned “profitable the propaganda conflict” had overshadowed the ladies’s welfare.
“The excessive stakes made the Iranian regime sit up and listen and attempt to pressure their hand in response, for my part,” Moore-Gilbert informed the Australian Broadcasting Corp.
“But it surely wasn’t essentially to be identified that this story would blow up and change into the worldwide story that it did. However I do assume on this case, had these girl quietly sought asylum with out that publicity round them, it is doable that the Islamic Republic officers might need, as they’ve within the circumstances of different Iranian sports activities individuals previously who’ve defected … merely allowed that to occur,” she added.
Iran’s Tasnim Information Company mentioned after the three left Australia on Saturday and that they have been “returning to the nice and cozy embrace of their household and homeland.”
Considerations in regards to the workforce’s security in Iran heightened when the gamers did not sing the Iranian nationwide anthem earlier than their first match.
The Australian authorities was urged to assist the ladies by Iranian teams in Australia and by Trump.
The Iranian information company described the ladies’s return to the workforce because the “disgraceful failure of the American-Australian venture and one other failure for Trump.”
Some members of the Iranian diaspora in Australia have accused the assist staffer who initially accepted asylum then left Australia on Saturday of spreading Iranian authorities propaganda to her teammates by way of textual content messages.
Thistlethwaite mentioned there was no proof to assist the speculation that the staffer had persuaded others to depart. All those that had remained in Australia after the workforce had left have been “real asylum seekers,” he mentioned.
Thistlethwaite mentioned the ladies had been taken to an undisclosed “protected vacation spot” as soon as they’d determined to remain in Australia.
“They have been in a position to talk with household and with others. I perceive that a few of them did make contact with the Iranian embassy right here in Australia. We won’t minimize off communications for them,” Thistlethwaite mentioned.
The embassy within the nationwide capital Canberra stays staffed, regardless of the Australian authorities expelling the ambassador final yr.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese minimize off diplomatic relations with Iran in August after asserting that intelligence officers had concluded that the Revoluntionary Guard had directed arson assaults on a Sydney kosher meals firm and Melbourne’s Adass Israel Synagogue in 2024.
Australian-Iranian Society of Victoria vice-president Kambiz Razmara mentioned the ladies who accepted asylum had been beneath strain from the Tehran regime.
“They’ve needed to make choices on the spur of the second with little or no info and so they’ve needed to react to the circumstance,” Razmara mentioned. “I am stunned that they’ve determined to go, however I am really not stunned as a result of I admire the pressures that they are experiencing.”
