‘Intimidated and surveilled’: How Iran women’s team are silenced on Gold Coast

Between the high tea enthusiasts, travelling AFL fans and young families, the surveillance was almost imperceptible. This was, for the most part, a bustling Gold Coast hotel lobby like any other. And on any other week, it would be.

This week, however, the five-star resort’s plush entrance was also where two men, toned down in civvies, could be seen walking odd security-esque laps around the island cafe. Watching and responding, but mostly watching.

“Five minutes,” one said, and the rest of the odd people out took their positions. Asian Football Confederation officials and hotel staff approached the main doors and remained there as the Iran women’s national team disembarked the team bus and walked inside.

The players appeared genial for a group whose lives had just been threatened on Iranian state television. They had been called “wartime traitors” for not singing the Islamic regime’s national anthem before Monday’s opening Women’s Asian Cup game with South Korea, less than 48 hours after the US-Israel assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Footage of radical conservative presenter Mohammad Reza Shahbazi calling for the squad and coach Marziyeh Jafari to “be dealt with more severely” emerged on Friday morning, after the previous night’s about-face – they sang and saluted the anthem before kick-off against Australia, under suspected instruction from their security, who are believed to be closely linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

But the eyes were still watching, chaperoning players into a hotel they never leave apart from escorted trips to training and games. Watching as they eat lunch inside a conference room guarded by a tournament official, then watching as they retire to their rooms on a heavily secured floor, in the company of affiliated Iranian women.

Outside, the rest of the country is grappling with grave concerns over the team’s safety, as calls for the Australian government to grant them immediate asylum intensify. If Iran lose to the Philippines in Sunday’s final group game, their tournament will be over. It is unclear how or when a return home would be possible given the mushrooming conflict, but the precariousness of their situation is very real.

“It is very obvious these girls are being intimidated and surveilled, and there is a massive target on their back,” said Tina Kordrostami, an Iran-born Sydney councillor and leader in Sydney’s Iranian diaspora. “We only have two days left while they are in the country. As soon as they leave, there is nothing we can do to help them.”

Kordrostami acknowledged the players’ fears about retribution against loved ones in Iran but she said they simply would not be safe to return. This view echoed the words of independent Iranian journalist and political analyst Ali Bornaei, who warned the Australian government the team’s lives were “in imminent danger”.

“In Iran, ‘treason’ is a capital offence punishable by death,” Bornaei posted on X. “These athletes face arbitrary detention and execution if forced to return.” In the post tagging Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong, he said the Australian government “must not allow them to be sent back to a regime that views a silent protest as a crime worthy of the gallows”.

Liberal senator Dave Sharma agreed. “If they make a claim for asylum, yes we should consider it seriously in line with our obligations,” he said. “It would seem they have a well-founded fear of persecution on their return.”

Asian Cup organisers have been in dialogue with the Home Affairs Department since the escalation of violence in Iran. A spokesperson previously said security arrangements for the tournament were run under Australia’s “government-led, multi-agency framework for major international events”.

Social activist and former Socceroo Craig Foster directed the pressure of intervention on to FIFA and the AFC. “They must issue a clear public statement affirming that every player competing under their jurisdiction holds the unqualified right to any response, or non-response, to their own national anthem,” he said

“They must make equally clear that any threat made, or any action taken, against the Iranian women’s players, their families, or any other player or staff member for conduct protected under FIFA’s own human rights framework constitutes a direct and actionable violation of that framework – with consequences for the member federation responsible.

“The documented intimidation of national team players by state security forces – forcing them under threat of family persecution to perform a political act in a FIFA competition – is government interference of the most direct and violent kind.”

Any asylum attempt is fraught with the danger of interference, but the stifling security situation further heightens the complexities of this case, and the jarring juxtaposition of such an oppressive and secretive regime operating in the same space as Australian hotel guests enjoying a break on the glitter strip.

“It is a form of imprisonment,” Kordrostami said. “We know from people inside the hotel that they are accompanied almost everywhere, that their devices are monitored and controlled. They’re really bringing the methods of the regime into our country.”

Kordrostami said she had been in touch with one of the Iranian players on a message app until recently, but the contact suddenly went dead. Their emoji-laden conversations in Farsi were suddenly replaced with a single terse reply in English: “I’m fine, don’t talk to me.”

“It’s very obvious that her phone is no longer in her own hands,” Kordrostami said. “These are all 23, 21-year-old girls and they are being asked to make impossible decisions that could put their families at risk. They have limited access to what’s happening outside the team environment, what’s going on back home, so officials can feed them misinformation.

“What do we expect these girls to do – they can’t come out and say ‘I need help’. Their families are at risk. They don’t have the technological means to communicate. They made the only statement they could by not singing the anthem.”

Matildas playmaker Amy Sayer said swapping jerseys with the Iranian players was the least Australia’s squad could do to show their support.

“I know that they’re having a tough time and at least it’s a nice memento for them to go back home to, if they’re able to,” Sayer said. “I know they’re really struggling with the sort of interference from their government and everything but I hope they enjoyed the game.”

The women’s anthem about-face mirrored that of Iran’s men’s side at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, where the players stayed silent for the anthem preceding their first game against England before singing along before their next match against Wales. It occurred in the heat of the most widespread revolt against the government since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, over the death in police custody of 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman Mahsa Amini.

The Iran women’s team has kept a low profile since arriving in Australia eight days ago, speaking only in mandatory press conferences where questions containing even a whiff of anything political have been made off limits to journalists, or have been shut down by an AFC moderator. That happened to Alireza Mohebbi, a journalist with London-based Iran International, who asked coach Jafari and captain Zahra Ghanbari about the death of Khamenei on Sunday.

In Thursday’s post-match press conference, an Australian-based Iranian reporter was ignored by Jafari and Iran’s interpreter when he asked if the wearing of mandatory hijabs had affected the team’s performance.

Media, however, have also refrained from sensitive questions of their own volition, anxious about risking the safety of a squad under unimaginable pressure, coupled with the distress of being unable to contact their families under a national internet blackout back home.

Kylie Moore-Gilbert, the Australian academic and writer who was imprisoned in Iran for more two years after being invited to a conference in Iran in 2018, labelled the team’s decision to stay silent during the anthem a “courageous act”.

“Football is far and away the most popular sport in Iran,” Moore-Gilbert said. “There is no way that anyone who has any role as a team official, or is part of a delegation overseas, has not been ideologically vetted by the regime. It’s very tightly controlled.”

Read more on the unfolding conflict in the Middle East:

• Live updates: Israel launches another wave of strikes in Beirut
• The news: Iranian leader labels Trump “Israel First”
• Tracking the war: Where the US struck and where Iran retaliated
• Israel attacks Lebanon: What is Hezbollah and why is Israel attacking Lebanon?
• The three men to stop Trump: Who are the Islamic Republic’s interim leadership team?
• Iran’s nuclear proposal: The tantalising fact Trump couldn’t ignore

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