Calls grow for Australia to help Iran women’s football team after their Asian Cup act saw them branded as ‘wartime traitors’ on state TV

Calls are growing for Australia to provide asylum to the Iranian women’s football team after their brave act at an Asian Cup match saw the players branded ‘wartime traitors’ who should be ‘dealt with severely’. 

The team’s refusal to sing Iran‘s national anthem before Monday’s Asian Cup match against South Korea, has been condemned, with one Iranian state TV presenter insisting the squad should feel the full ‘stigma of dishonour and betrayal’.

Mohammad Reza Shahbazi, the host of the channel’s Footnote program and considered a radical mouthpiece of the regime, said authorities must label the women as traitors. In Iran, treason is a capital offence punishable by death. 

‘Let me just say one thing: traitors during wartime must be dealt with more severely,’ Shahbazi said, according to social media platform X’s translation.

‘Anyone who takes a step against the country under war conditions must be dealt with more severely. Like this matter of our women’s football team not singing the national anthem, and that photo that was published and so on, which I won’t get into. 

‘Both the public and the authorities must treat these individuals as ‘wartime traitors.’

‘It should not be viewed merely as an objection or a symbolic gesture. 

‘The stain of dishonour and treason must remain on their foreheads, and they must face a definitive and severe confrontation.’

Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong has been called on to help the women after their brave act

In an apparent silent protest to the Islamic regime, the team and their coach Marziyeh Jafari stood in silence on Monday as the anthem played, just two days after their supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed in a US-Israel strike.

It’s understood the women have been unable to contact their families caught up in the ongoing conflict after a national internet blackout was issued in Iran.

The team and support staff sang the national anthem before Thursday’s 4-0 loss against the Matildas, with some declaring the players ‘hostages of the regime’. 

‘These brave and peace loving women footballers are at risk. They have been threatened by the regime to sing the anthem and salute. Please be their voice,’ one Iranian-Australian commented online.

Another told AAP: ‘I think the players are hostages of the Islamic regime who are trying to normalise their crimes they have committed on Iranian people.’

Calls are loudening for the Albanese Government to urgently intervene and help the women before they have to return to Iran.

In a social media post addressed to Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong, Iranian journalist Ali Bornaei said the government should provide immediate asylum to the women as they are ‘in imminent danger’. 

‘These athletes face arbitrary detention and execution if forced to return,’ Mr Bornaei said. ‘Australia must not allow them to be sent back to a regime that views a silent protest as a crime worthy of the gallows.’

However at their next match three days later, the team saluted and sang to the national anthem

Others also tagged Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke in several posts.

‘Please do something. We cannot allow these young women to return to a country where they will be arrested and likely brutally tortured. Please give them asylum,’ one woman commented.

Another said: ‘Senator Wong, please take action before something happens to these girls.’

Retired Socceroo and human rights activist, Craig Foster, has also called for the sport’s international governing body FIFA to step in. 

‘The Iranian women’s players still have a match remaining in this tournament. The threat to them and to their families back home does not end with the final whistle. History tells us that,’ Mr Foster said.

‘FIFA and the [Asian Football Confederation] 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.’

The Daily Mail has contacted the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade for comment.