{"id":529873,"date":"2026-03-10T00:11:13","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T00:11:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/529873\/"},"modified":"2026-03-10T00:11:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T00:11:13","slug":"iranian-womens-football-team-in-australia-what-happened","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/529873\/","title":{"rendered":"Iranian women&#8217;s football team in Australia: what happened?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Five members of the Iranian women\u2019s Asian Cup team are being protected by police after staging a dramatic escape from their handlers at a Brisbane hotel.<\/p>\n<p>Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke confirmed the women had been granted humanitarian visas to avoid persecution in their home country for refusing to sing the Iranian national anthem at one of their Asian Cup games.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Burke said conversations about protecting the team started in earnest during the very early hours of Monday morning.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOnce that happened \u2026 it was made clear that there were five women who wanted to be able to stay in Australia,\u201d he told reporters in Brisbane early on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey were moved to a safe location by the Australian Federal Police, and last night, I met with them at that location.<\/p>\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Last night I was able to tell five women from the Iranian Women\u2019s Soccer team that they are welcome to stay in Australia, to be safe and have a home here. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/2JQp9q9Z8W\" rel=\"nofollow\">pic.twitter.com\/2JQp9q9Z8W<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Tony Burke (@Tony_Burke) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Tony_Burke\/status\/2031104424765174251?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">March 9, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cI signed off last night for their applications to go onto humanitarian visas, and a little bit after 1:30am this morning, the processing was completed by the department of home affairs.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI say to the other members of the team, the same opportunity is there,\u201d Mr Burke said.<\/p>\n<p>The rest of the squad are still with their Iranian handlers, he added.<\/p>\n<p>Their plight prompted the intervention of US President Donald Trump, who had a late-night phone call with his Australian counterpart Anthony Albanese, and later congratulated the prime minister for protecting the women.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe\u2019s on it! Five have already been taken care of, and the rest are on their way,\u201d Mr Trump said in a post on his social media platform Truth Social.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSome, however, feel they must go back because they are worried about the safety of their families, including threats to those family members if they don\u2019t return.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/football360.com.au\/iran-womens-asian-cup-player-safety\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Advocates had been imploring Australian officials to meet with the team to secure their safety<\/a> after the squad were seen making what appeared to be an SOS hand signal on Sunday night after their final Asian Cup match.<\/p>\n<p>Leaving their final match of the competition on Sunday night, at least one of the women appeared to make the international signal for help through the window of the team bus \u2013 raising an open palm, crossing the thumb over it and folding the four fingers over the top.<\/p>\n<p>Protesters surrounded the bus and the women appeared to film the crowd through the window.<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Five members of the Iranian women\u2019s Asian Cup team are being protected by police after staging a dramatic&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":529874,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,5575,263256,85],"class_list":["post-529873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-iran","tag-iran-womens-football-side","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=529873"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529873\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/529874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=529873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=529873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=529873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}