Only two members of the Iranian women’s football squad now remain in Australia after the team’s captain became the fifth player to withdraw her asylum application, with human rights advocates saying Tehran systematically pressured the women by threatening their families back in Iran.
Zahra Ghanbari, 34 and Iran’s all-time leading goalscorer in women’s football, withdrew her asylum application on Sunday and flew from Malaysia to Iran, becoming the latest in a series of reversals that has dramatically narrowed the group of players who initially accepted humanitarian visas to remain permanently in Australia.
Seven members of the delegation had sought protection in Australia, with five players slipping away from their team hotel under cover of darkness after the squad’s elimination from the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Women’s Asian Cup. A sixth player and a support staffer claimed asylum at the airport before the rest of the squad departed. One player reversed course within days, followed by three more over the weekend, before Ghanbari’s departure on Sunday left just two women in the country.
Iran International reported that Ghanbari’s mother had been threatened by Iranian security bodies, including the intelligence unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and that members of the team stranded in Kuala Lumpur had relayed those threats to Ghanbari after learning of the pressure on her family. The same report identified a support staff member who had herself accepted asylum as having passed threatening messages from Iran’s Football Federation leadership to the players still in Australia.
Exiled Iranian former footballer Shiva Amini said on Sunday that the reversals were not voluntary. “Several of the players decided to go back because the threats against their families became unbearable and the intimidation was relentless,” she wrote on social media, accusing Iran’s Football Federation of working alongside the IRGC to orchestrate what she described as “intense and systemic pressure.”
The crisis began on March 2, when the Iranian squad fell silent as the national anthem played ahead of their opening group match against South Korea. The silence, which came days after the United States and Israel launched strikes that killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was immediately denounced on state television as an act of treason. By their next two matches the players were singing the anthem and saluting it, prompting rights activists to conclude they had been instructed to do so by government officials travelling with the delegation.
Australia’s Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said Australian Federal Police had interviewed every squad member independently and ensured each understood they were being offered genuine protection. As the team’s departure drew near, officials took each woman aside at the airport for a private conversation through an interpreter to confirm they understood their options. Burke said on Sunday that his government had done everything it could to ensure the women were given real choices, while acknowledging it could not remove the context in which those decisions were being made.
Two Iranian diplomats, one at the embassy in Copenhagen and one in Canberra, also submitted asylum applications in the days surrounding the crisis, according to Iran International. The Fédération Internationale des Associations de Footballeurs Professionnels (FIFPRO), the global players’ welfare body, said it was monitoring the situation and in contact with the two players who remain in Australia.
