This picture taken on March 8, 2026 reveals Iranian gamers operating in direction of their positions firstly 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 Pictures
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STR/AFP/by way of Getty Pictures
MELBOURNE, Australia — A fifth member of the Iranian girls’s soccer staff 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, Residence 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 stress from Tehran.
Burke reported on Sunday that two gamers and a staff help workers member had left Sydney for Malaysia on Saturday.
Iran’s staff 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 help workers 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 staff has remained in Kuala Lumpur since they left Australia.
Assistant Immigration Minister Matt Thistlethwaite described the ladies’s plight in Australia as a “very complex situation.”
“We’ve 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,” Thistlethwaite instructed Sky Information tv.
“They’re being given all the support of the Australian government and indeed the diaspora community to remain 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 prices from 2018 to 2020, mentioned “winning the propaganda war” had overshadowed the ladies’s welfare.
“The high stakes made the Iranian regime sit up and pay attention and try to force their hand in response, in my view,” Moore-Gilbert instructed the Australian Broadcasting Corp.
“But it wasn’t 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’s possible that the Islamic Republic officials might have, as they have in the cases of other Iranian sports people in the past who’ve defected … simply allowed that to happen,” she added.
Iran’s Tasnim Information Company mentioned after the three left Australia on Saturday and that they had been “returning to the warm embrace of their family and homeland.”
Issues concerning the staff’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 staff because the “disgraceful failure of the American-Australian project and another failure for Trump.”
Some members of the Iranian diaspora in Australia have accused the help 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 help the idea that the staffer had persuaded others to depart. All those that had remained in Australia after the staff had left had been “genuine asylum seekers,” he mentioned.
Thistlethwaite mentioned the ladies had been taken to an undisclosed “safe destination” as soon as they’d determined to remain in Australia.
“They’ve 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’t cut off communications for them,” Thistlethwaite mentioned.
The embassy within the nationwide capital Canberra stays staffed, regardless of the Australian authorities expelling the ambassador final 12 months.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese lower 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 below stress from the Tehran regime.
“They’ve had to make decisions at the spur of the moment with very little information and they’ve had to react to the circumstance,” Razmara mentioned. “I’m surprised that they’ve decided to go, but I’m actually not surprised because I appreciate the pressures that they’re experiencing.”
