{"id":526209,"date":"2026-03-16T04:19:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T04:19:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/526209\/"},"modified":"2026-03-16T04:19:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T04:19:08","slug":"5th-iranian-soccer-team-member-gives-up-asylum-in-australia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/526209\/","title":{"rendered":"5th Iranian soccer team member gives up asylum in Australia"},"content":{"rendered":"

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) \u2014 A fifth member of the Iranian women\u2019s soccer team<\/a> who accepted a refugee visa to stay in Australia has left the country, the Australian government said on Monday.<\/p>\n

The player\u2019s departure shortly before midnight on Sunday leaves two of an initial seven squad members in Australia, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke\u2019s office said.<\/p>\n

The Iranian authorities have welcomed the women\u2019s change of heart as a victory against Australia and U.S. President Donald Trump<\/a>. The Iranian diaspora in Australia blame pressure from Tehran. <\/p>\n

Burke reported on Sunday that two players and a team support staff member had left Sydney for Malaysia on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s team arrived in Australia for the Women\u2019s Asian Cup last month, before the war<\/a> in the Middle East began on Feb. 28.<\/p>\n

Initially, six players and a support staff member from a squad list of 26 players accepted humanitarian visas to stay in Australia before the rest of the Iranian contingent<\/a> flew from Sydney to Kuala Lumpur on March 10.<\/p>\n

Another later changed her mind and left Australia.<\/p>\n

The rest of the team has remained in Kuala Lumpur since they left Australia.<\/p>\n

Assistant Immigration Minister Matt Thistlethwaite described the women\u2019s plight in Australia as a \u201cvery complex situation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve 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 that have chosen to return. And we continue to offer support to the two that are remaining,\u201d Thistlethwaite told Sky News television.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re being given all the support of the Australian government and indeed the diaspora community to remain here and settle in Australia,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Kylie Moore-Gilbert<\/a>, a political scientist at Sydney\u2019s Macquarie University who spent more than two years in Iranian prisons on spying charges from 2018 to 2020, said \u201cwinning the propaganda war\u201d had overshadowed the women\u2019s welfare.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe high stakes made the Iranian regime sit up and pay attention and try to force their hand in response, in my view,\u201d Moore-Gilbert told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it wasn\u2019t necessarily to be known that this story would blow up and become the international story that it did. But I do think in this case, had these woman quietly sought asylum without that publicity around them, it\u2019s possible that the Islamic Republic officials might have, as they have in the cases of other Iranian sports people in the past who\u2019ve defected … simply allowed that to happen,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s Tasnim News Agency said after the three left Australia on Saturday and that they were \u201creturning to the warm embrace of their family and homeland.\u201d <\/p>\n

Concerns about the team\u2019s safety in Iran heightened when the players didn\u2019t sing the Iranian national anthem before their first match.<\/p>\n

The Australian government was urged to help the women by Iranian groups in Australia and by Trump.<\/p>\n

The Iranian news agency described the women\u2019s return to the team as the \u201cdisgraceful failure of the American-Australian project and another failure for Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some members of the Iranian diaspora in Australia have accused the support staffer who initially accepted asylum then left Australia on Saturday of spreading Iranian government propaganda to her teammates via text messages.<\/p>\n

Thistlethwaite said there was no evidence to support the theory that the staffer had persuaded others to leave. All those who had remained in Australia after the team had left were \u201cgenuine asylum seekers,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Thistlethwaite said the women had been taken to an undisclosed \u201csafe destination\u201d once they had decided to stay in Australia.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve been able to communicate with family and with others. I understand that some of them did make contact with the Iranian embassy here in Australia. We can\u2019t cut off communications for them,\u201d Thistlethwaite said.<\/p>\n

The embassy in the national capital Canberra remains staffed, despite the Australian government expelling the ambassador<\/a> last year.<\/p>\n

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese<\/a> cut off diplomatic relations with Iran in August after announcing that intelligence officials had concluded that the Revoluntionary Guard had directed arson attacks on a Sydney kosher food company and Melbourne\u2019s Adass Israel Synagogue<\/a> in 2024.<\/p>\n

Australian-Iranian Society of Victoria vice-president Kambiz Razmara said the women who accepted asylum had been under pressure from the Tehran regime.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve had to make decisions at the spur of the moment with very little information and they\u2019ve had to react to the circumstance,\u201d Razmara said. \u201cI\u2019m surprised that they\u2019ve decided to go, but I\u2019m actually not surprised because I appreciate the pressures that they\u2019re experiencing.\u201d <\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

This story has been edited to correct that Macquarie University is in Sydney, not Melbourne.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) \u2014 A fifth member of the Iranian women\u2019s soccer team who accepted a refugee visa…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":526210,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[33820,1927,3995,10987,1246,77170,12,793,790,801,1570,236813,111,403,99,28671,214457,1765,25450,965],"class_list":["post-526209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-anthony-albanese","tag-ap-top-news","tag-asia","tag-asylum","tag-australia","tag-australia-government","tag-donald-trump","tag-general-news","tag-immigration","tag-iran","tag-iran-government","tag-matt-thistlethwaite","tag-politics","tag-soccer","tag-sports","tag-sydney","tag-tony-burke","tag-womens-sports","tag-womens-soccer","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=526209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526209\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/526210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=526209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=526209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=526209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}