MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) \u2014 The United States and Australia\u2019s political tug of war against Iran over the fates of seven members of the Iranian women\u2019s soccer squad appears to have ended with the depleted team returning home minus the two players who defected last week.
Critics now say politics trumped concern for the women\u2019s best interests as the drama played out. The evidence is that of seven Iranian women who initially accepted asylum in Australia, five changed their minds within days and returned to the team for reasons undisclosed.
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Critics argue the outcome might have been different had the women been provided with independent legal advice earlier and the process not been so rushed.
\u201cWe ended up with an outcome that is certainly far from ideal,\u201d said Graham Thom, advocacy coordinator for the Refugee Council of Australia, a non-profit umbrella organization representing asylum seekers.
\u201cHopefully the two who are remaining get the protection they need, but we just hope that those who have returned are also safe,\u201d he added.
Iran has claimed victory in the extraordinary public relations battle that played out since Immigration Minister Tony Burke released to the media on March 10 a photo of him posing with five women who had accepted protection visas.
He said the women, who all appeared without head coverings, were happy for their names and images to be released to the media.
Refugee advocates were alarmed, asking if women raised under an oppressive regime could be expected to question the Australian government\u2019s media strategy.
Kylie Moore-Gilbert, 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.
\u201cHad these women 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 sportspeople in the past who\u2019ve defected … simply allowed that to happen,\u201d Moore-Gilbert told Australian Broadcasting Corp. this week.
Australia has traditionally handled asylum negotiations behind closed doors, conscious that the public spotlight can ramp up pressure and bring dangers to potential refugees and their families.
Concerns for the team\u2019s welfare were raised when players decided against singing the Iranian national anthem before their first match of the Women’s Asian Cup on the Gold Coast on March 2.
Iranian sports commentator Mohammad Reza Shahbazi calling the women \u201cwartime traitors\u201d in a television broadcast that was widely cited by protesters demanding asylum for the team.
The gesture attracted global attention and was not repeated at the women’s next match, at which they sang the anthem.
Shahram Akbarzadeh, professor of Middle East politics at Deakin University in Geelong, suspects the team hadn\u2019t thought through the consequences of \u201cexpressing a political opinion\u201d on the Iranian regime.
\u201cSometimes frustration overrides fear of consequences,\u201d Akbarzadeh said.
\u201cUnfortunately for these players, their act of defiance turned into a symbol of resistance against the regime and basically a cause to be played by the United States and the Iranian diaspora who were anti-regime to humiliate and embarrass the regime and to basically gain a political score from the situation,\u201d he added.
The stakes were raised when U.S. President Donald Trump used social media to call for the team to be granted asylum and telephoned Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on the issue.
Albanese told the Trump that the first five, a four players and a team manager, had recently accepted offers of humanitarian visas.
Another two squad members chose to stay before the rest of the team flew from Sydney to Malaysia on March 10 after being knocked out of the competition.
\u201cIt quickly turned into a political dispute and political theater between Iran and the U.S. (and) Australia and of course the Iranians responded accordingly. They couldn\u2019t be seen to be as embarrassed by their failure,\u201d Akbarzadeh said.
All but two women who accepted asylum rejoined the team in Kuala Lumpur before the squad flew to Oman on Monday. Iranian state media reported they had returned to their homeland by bus from Turkey and were met with a welcome ceremony.
\u201cWe are so happy to be in Iran, because Iran is our homeland,\u201d midfielder Fatemeh Shaban told a flag-waving crowd.
The reasons why five women changed their minds about creating new lives in Australia have not been made pubic, but there were expectations that the regime would threaten family members.
Shiva Amini, a former Iranian national soccer player who now lives in New York City, said she had been in contact with the two women who had remained in Australia, Fatemeh Pasandideh and Atefeh Ramezanisadeh, and some of those who had decided to return to Iran.
Amini was granted asylum in Switzerland in 2017 after the Iranian government threatened to sanction her being photographed in the European country playing a casual game of soccer with men while not wearing the mandatory hijab, or headscarf.
\u201cThis is beyond sad that they couldn\u2019t stay, because even if you get back to Iran, they\u2019re gonna threaten your family,\u201d Amini told The Associated Press on Tuesday.
Amini declined to elaborate on her conversations with players out of concern for their safety and the safety of their families.
She said the regime put pressure on at least one of the players, whom she declined to name, to return to Iran by threatening to harm her mother.
Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said none of the five women who changed their minds about staying in Australia had been pressured by Iran to return home.
\u201cThey didn\u2019t seek asylum. They were forced to. They were coerced to. They didn\u2019t do it voluntarily,\u201d Baghaei told ABC on Thursday.
Asked if the two players who remained in Australia were being held against their will, he replied: \u201cI guess so.\u201d
Baghaei said Australian officials had asked the Iranian women to go to a room on the pretext of testing for performance enhancing drugs, and then told the women to sign visa papers and pose with Burke for photos.
\u201cThis was a shameful, sham posture,\u201d Baghaei said.
Australia has denied pressuring the women to stay or go.
After the fifth refugee rejoined her team in Kuala Lumpa on Monday, Assistant Immigration Minister Matt Thistlethwaite described the team’s plight in Australia as a \u201cvery complex situation.\u201d
\u201cThese 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 said.
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Associated Press reporter Philip Marcelo in New York contributed to this report. <\/p>\n