Captain of Iranian women’s football team leaves Australia after initially accepting offer of asylum

The captain of the Iranian women’s football squad has left Australia after withdrawing her claim of asylum.

Zahra Ghanbari became the fifth member of the football cohort to change her mind after initially taking up an offer to stay in the country following the Asian Cup.

The office of the home affairs minister, Tony Burke, confirmed on Monday that another team member had left late on Sunday night.

Ghanbari’s decision to join fellow players in Malaysia was reported by Iranian state news agency IRNA, which has seized on the about-face from all but two members of the cohort as a propaganda coup for the nation’s under-siege regime.

Australia initially granted asylum to seven members of the party, including one from the support staff, last week while they were in the country for the Asian Cup.

Burke said on Sunday, after three of the women decided to return to Iran, the players were given repeated chances to talk about their options after telling Australian officials they had made this decision.

“While the Australian government can ensure that opportunities are provided and communicated, we cannot remove the context in which the players are making these incredibly difficult decisions,” he said.

Shiva Amini, a former Iranian national futsal team player and human rights activist, said she believed Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps - Tehran’s paramilitary defenders of the 1979 revolution - had pressured the families of players who’d chosen to stay in Australia.

She claimed the family of captain Zahra Ghanbari, the latest player to choose to return to Iran, had been explicitly targeted.

“However, a number of the players are still there. They are under enormous pressure and they urgently need support and protection,” she said.”

Amini alleged a team official “who presented themselves to the players as someone they could trust and rely on, they were able to persuade some of the players to return”.

But Australian government sources say this allegation had been investigated and could not be substantiated.

A member of the Iranian-Australian diaspora, who asked not to be named, said reports out of Iran suggested members of the team staff had been relaying messages from the Iranian government to the players who’d chosen to stay in Australia.

“They also reported that their families were threatened and even some voice messages by their families were played for the football players to convince them to go back,” the diaspora member said.

The diaspora source also said they believed the intervention of US president Donald Trump was acutely unhelpful to the players facing an invidious choice.

Last week, Trump took to social media to loudly pressure Australia into accepting the Iranian players, even though the home affairs minister had already signed off on their visas.

But the high-profile presidential intervention backed the Iranian regime into a corner, the source said, incentivising it to put pressure on the women to return to Iran, as a political victory over the US.

Other Iranian athlete defections in other countries - unnoticed by the US president - have attracted far less regime attention.

The Tasnim News Agency, a state-run organisation closely allied to the Revolutionary Guards - has been celebrating the return of players who had chosen to accept humanitarian visas to stay in Australia.

Tasnim said the players had “abandoned their asylum applications in Australia, and… heading toward the warm embrace of their families and nation”.

It reported the players’ “patriotic decision” was “driven by deep loyalty to the homeland and the Iranian flag”.

“The unwavering national pride and patriotism of Iran’s female national football players have thwarted the sinister schemes of enemies targeting the team,” Tasnim said.

The reportage praised the women for choosing to return home “over alluring temptations”, and said their decision to choose Iran was a “crushing blow to the US president, who overtly spearheaded this initiative”.

“The reversal by these… Iranian national female footballers from their fleeting choice, returning to Iran amidst the imposed war and the nation’s endurance, represents a profound victory embodying patriotism, infinite devotion to Iran, and the resilience of courageous daughters of Iran who aligned with their people at a pivotal historical moment, securing an enduring legacy for themselves.”

On Monday morning government minister Catherine King told ABC radio that “both Tony Burke and Australia can be really proud” to have offered the women “genuine choices”.

“They had every opportunity to know that they were safe and welcome here,” she said. “[The decision] must have been incredibly hard … they would have been facing enormous pressure.

“Ultimately, it’s their choice.”

The team left a Gold Coast hotel on Tuesday afternoon under police guard with one player appearing to be pulled by a teammate onto a bus.

There are fears for the rest of the team’s safety on their return to Iran after they were labelled “wartime traitors” on Iranian state media for refusing to sing the national anthem before their opening match.