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Three more members of Iran’s women’s football team who accepted refugee visas to stay in Australia have decided to return to their home country, an Australian government minister said on Sunday.
The departure means three of the original seven squad members remain in Australia.
“Overnight, three members of the Iranian women’s football team decided to join the rest of the team on their return trip to Iran,” Interior Minister Tony Burke said in a statement.
“After informing Australian officials that they had made this decision, the players were given repeated opportunities to discuss their options,” Burke added.
The Iranian team arrived in Australia for the Women’s Asian Championships last month before Israel and the United States launched surprise airstrikes on their country on February 28.
Initially, six players and one support member from an official squad list of 26 accepted humanitarian visas to stay in Australia before the rest of the Iranian contingent flew from Sydney to Malaysia on March 9.
Another later changed her mind and left Australia. Three of them left Sydney on Saturday evening for Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, a government official said. The rest of the team has remained in Kuala Lumpur since their departure from Australia.
Iran’s Tasnim news agency said the last three to leave Australia were two players and the coach. The three “returned to the warm embrace of their family and their homeland,” the news agency said in a statement.
The Iranian news agency called the women’s return to the team a “shameful failure of the American-Australian project and another failure for Trump.”
Some Iranian groups in Australia and US President Donald Trump called on the Australian government to help the woman.
But earlier this week, Iran’s head coach Marziyeh Jafari said the players “want to return to Iran as soon as possible,” according to Australia’s national news agency AAP.
Players largely declined to comment on the war in their homeland during the tournament, although Iranian striker Sara Didar choked back tears in a news conference as she expressed concern for her families, friends and all Iranians during the conflict.
Concerns about the team’s safety in Iran grew when the players did not sing the Iranian national anthem before their first game against South Korea. The move was interpreted by some as an act of resistance and by others as a sign of mourning, but the team made no statement.
The team later sang and saluted the national anthem before the remaining two games.
The Iran war has killed more than 2,000 people, most of them in Iran, and caused the largest disruption of oil supplies in history – driving up prices dramatically as shipping has ground to a halt in a region that supplies a fifth of the world’s oil.
