This photo taken on March 8, 2026 shows Iran’s players running to their seats at the start of the AFC Women’s Asian Cup Australia 2026 football match between Iran and the Philippines in Gold Coast.
Via STR/AFP/Getty Images
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Via STR/AFP/Getty Images
MELBOURNE, Australia – A fifth member of Iran’s women’s soccer team, who received a refugee visa to stay in Australia, has left the country, the Australian government said on Monday.
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke’s office said the player’s departure before midnight on Sunday leaves two of the starting seven squad members in Australia.
Iranian officials hailed the women’s change of heart as a victory over Australia and US President Donald Trump. Iranian expatriates in Australia blame pressure from Tehran.
Burke reported on Sunday that the two players and the team’s support staff left Sydney for Malaysia on Saturday.
Iran’s team arrived in Australia for the Women’s Asian Cup last month before the outbreak of war in the Middle East on February 28.
Initially, six players and support staff members from the 26-man squad list received humanitarian visas to stay in Australia before flying from Sydney to Kuala Lumpur on March 10.
Then another changed her mind and left Australia.
After they left Australia, the rest of the team remained in Kuala Lumpur.
Assistant Immigration Minister Matt Thistlethwaite described the plight of women in Australia as a “very complex situation”.
“We are working very closely with them, but obviously it is a very complex situation. These are deeply personal decisions, and the Government respects the decisions of those who choose to return. And we will continue to offer support to the two who remain,” Thistlethwaite told Sky News television.
“They are being given all the support of the Australian government and indeed the diaspora community to stay here and settle in Australia,” he said.
Kylie Moore-Gilbert, a political scientist at Sydney’s Macquarie University who spent more than two years in Iranian prisons on espionage charges from 2018 to 2020, said “winning the propaganda war” overshadowed women’s welfare.
“The high stakes made the Iranian regime sit up and take notice and try to force their hand in response in my view,” Moore-Gilbert told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.
“But there is no need to know that this story will blow up and become an international story. But in this case, I think, if this woman had been quietly sheltered without publicity around them, the authorities of the Islamic Republic may have been in the cases of other Iranian sports figures who defected in the past … they simply allowed it.
Iran’s Tasnim news agency said the three had left Australia on Saturday and were “returning to the warm embrace of their family and homeland”.
Concerns about the safety of the team in Iran were raised when the players did not sing the Iranian national anthem before their first match.
The Australian government was forced to help Iranian groups and Trump women in Australia.
An Iranian news agency described the women’s return to the team as a “shameful failure of the US-Australian project and another failure for Trump”.
A support staff member who left Australia on Saturday after initially being granted asylum by some members of the Iranian diaspora in Australia has been accused of spreading Iranian government propaganda to his teammates via text messages.
Thistlethwaite said there was no evidence to support the theory that staff had persuaded others to leave. He said all those who remained in Australia after the team’s departure were “genuine asylum seekers”.
Thistlethwaite said the women were taken to an undisclosed “safe destination” after deciding to stay in Australia.
“They are able to communicate with family and others. I understand some of them are in contact with the Iranian embassy in Australia. We cannot cut off communication for them,” Thistlethwaite said.
The embassy in the national capital Canberra remains staffed despite the Australian government expelling the ambassador last year.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese cut diplomatic ties with Iran in August after announcing that intelligence officials had concluded that the Revolutionary Guard directed the 2024 arson attacks on a Sydney kosher food company and Melbourne’s Adas Israel synagogue.
Australian-Iranian Society of Victoria vice-president Kambiz Razmara said the women who received asylum were under pressure from the Tehran regime.
“They had to make decisions at the spur of the moment with very little information and they had to react to the situation,” Razmara said. “I’m surprised he decided to go, but I appreciate the pressures he’s going through because I’m not really surprised.”
