Five of Iran women’s football team granted asylum in Australia

“I signed off last night for their applications to go on to humanitarian visas. And a little bit after 1.30am this morning, the processing was completed by the department of home affairs.”

He added of the other players still with the team: “These women are tremendously popular in Australia, but we realise they are in a terribly difficult situation with the decisions that they’re making. The opportunity will continue to be there for them to talk to Australian officials if they wish to.”

The minister said the five players had consented to be identified. They are Fatemeh Pasandideh, Zahra Ghanbari, Zahra Sarbali, Atefeh Ramazanzadeh and Mona Hamoudi.

Revealing that the government had been in secret talks with the players for days, Burke acknowledged that fleeing was a “difficult decision” and said the remaining 15 or so members of the team would be welcome if they wished to stay.

“Even though the offer continues to be there for other members of the team, it is quite possible and indeed likely that not every woman in the team will make a decision to take up the opportunity that Australia would offer to them,” Burke said.

Some members of the team gave what appeared to be an SOS hand signal from their team bus on Sunday night as advocates pleaded for the Australian government to do everything possible to allow them to stay in Australia.

The Iran team, known as the Lionesses, played their final match of the Women’s Asian Cup on the Gold Coast on Sunday night, losing 2-0 to the Philippines.

The office of Reza Pahlavi, the son of the last shah and an opposition figurehead, had earlier said that the players were in a safe location after fleeing the team’s training camp.

The team were criticised in Tehran after refusing to sing the national anthem at their first match against South Korea last Monday, two days after US-Israeli strikes had killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Their silence was interpreted as a protest. In their second match against Australia on Thursday and then in Sunday’s final game against the Philippines, the Iranian team both sang and saluted during the national anthem, leading campaigners to believe they had been forced to do so by members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) who were accompanying them as part of the delegation.

On Monday, President Trump joined politicians, human rights activists and the author JK Rowling in calling for the players to be protected after a prominent mouthpiece for the regime, Mohammad Reza Shahbazi, called them “traitors during wartime [who] must be dealt with more severely”.

The US president initially accused Australia of “making a terrible humanitarian mistake by allowing the Iran national woman’s soccer team to be forced back to Iran, where they will most likely be killed”.

“The US will take them if you won’t,” Trump added on Truth Social, his social media site, before later confirming that at least some players had been granted asylum and praising the Australian prime minister.

“I just spoke to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, of Australia… He’s on it!” Trump wrote. “Five [players] have already been taken care of, and the rest are on their way.

“Some, however, feel they must go back [to Iran] because they are worried about the safety of their families, including threats to those family members if they don’t return. In any event, the Prime Minister is doing a very good job having to do with this rather delicate situation. God bless Australia!”

The players are reported to have slipped past heavy security at the Royal Pines Resort on the Gold Coast, where they were staying, and then sought protection from local authorities.

According to The Australian newspaper, this sparked panicked activity from their Iranian minders who are believed to be IRGC officials loyal to the regime.

A crowd of supporters clashed with the officials and attempted to prevent them from pursuing the players who had left. A van with blacked-out windows is thought to have been dispatched to try and locate the women but was seen re-entering the hotel grounds about 30 minutes later.

Tina Kordrostami, an Iranian-Australian activist and local councillor in New South Wales, called the women’s escape “amazing” and said: “We know that more are joining them as well.”

However, she added that she was concerned that Pahlavi’s office sharing the names and photos of the escaped players could bring consequences for their families.

Crowds banged drums, waved the shah’s flag and shouted “regime change for Iran” outside the Gold Coast stadium where the match took place. They then surrounded the Iranian team bus, chanting “let them go” and “save our girls”.

One of the players was seen tucking her thumb into her palm and folding her fingers over it in a gesture understood to mean “SOS”, while others filmed videos through the bus’s darkened windows on their mobile phones.

An Iranian football player was pulled by the wrist onto a bus by one of her teammates as the Iranian national women’s team departed their Gold Coast hotel on Tuesday to fly out of Australia, while another was heard wailing as she said goodbye to a supporter.

Video published by The Australian showed the player being firmly escorted by one member of her squad and ushered from behind by another woman, just hours after five of her teammates were granted asylum.

Police watched on as the woman hung her head and walked onto the bus, believed to be taking the players to the airport to travel back to Iran via Kuala Lumpur.

In 2021, the Australian government helped to evacuate Afghanistan’s women’s footballers from Kabul after the Taliban took over.

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