Two faces of tyranny: One had to be dragged onto a bus taking her back to Iran’s evil regime. The other is the grinning youngster who wanted to stay – but then did the UNTHINKABLE

The image is now burned in people’s memories – the Iranian female soccer player being dragged onto a bus to be sent back to the brutalist regime of her native Iran.

Afsaneh Chatrenoor was pulled from her Gold Coast hotel by a teammate, with another close behind pressing her arm into the 27-year-old’s shoulder.

The Iranian Lionesses striker, who left the Royal Pines Resort hotel with her head bowed, has been a consistent goalscorer for her team.

Unsurprisingly though, with all the struggles in their homeland and tensions within the team and their camp, Iran didn’t score once in their three matches at the current Australian-hosted Women’s Asian Cup.

She had already got a taste for life in Australia while at another tournament three years ago, when she was pictured petting kangaroos and feeding koalas in Perth.  

Afsaneh’s apparent unwillingness to leave this week prompted speculation from regime change supporters that she would stay and join the five who had already sought asylum.

They hoped she would refuse to board the flight from Sydney to Malaysia on Tuesday night – but Afsaneh was still there when the remaining players arrived with their handlers in Kuala Lumpur on their way back to Iran.

Afsaneh had previously posted a cryptic Instagram message alongside a team photo last year, saying: ‘Don’t live your life in fear, live your life in courage.’

It was a quote from author Ernest Hemingway, but was followed by another relating to her homeland’s problems, wishing ‘…a good year for my fellow countrymen.’

She wished for ‘a year in which their sufferings are less due to economic problems and health and happiness become the share of their families’.

Outside of Iran – where penalties for ‘improper covering’ remain – Afsaneh regularly dresses in very Western casual clothing while travelling for soccer tournaments.

A national figure who has appeared on Iranian TV sports shows, she appreciates the ‘career, family and wealth’ she has gained through soccer, adding: ‘I deserve it all.’

Zara Sharodin, an Iran regime change supporter, said Afsaneh appeared ‘pale and scared’ when she landed in Malaysia on the trip home for the remaining Lionesses.

One player not on the plane was the team’s youngest star, Mohaddeseh Zolfi, a midfielder who scored for Iran during the Asian Cup qualifying rounds.

On Tuesday, Zolfi was briefly the seventh Iranian woman to defect, following the initial five who escaped the Royal Pines Hotel on Monday night, and a backroom staffer.

However Zolfi changed her mind again on Wednesday morning after speaking further to her team-mates – and phoned the Iran Embassy to come and collect her.

She gave embassy staff the address of the safe house where they had been hidden by the Australian government – and dramatically blew its cover. 

Officials had to move the rest of the team to a new address immediately.

Iranian state TV had branded the remaining fleeing players – Fatemeh Pasandideh, Zahra Ghanbari, Zahra Sarbali, Atefeh Ramazanzadeh and Mona Hamoudi – ‘traitors’ for refusing to sing the anthem before their opening match with South Korea on the Gold Coast last week.

They had fled the hotel in the middle of the night, and as they were being hunted for by Iran backroom staff, the Albanese government granted them asylum.

When the remainder of the team prepared to leave Australia on Tuesday, it was speculated more would join the defectors.

Another player, Golnoosh Khosrani, signed the paperwork with Home Affairs on Tuesday, only to have a very last-minute change of mind and boarded the Malaysia flight after all.

In the end, it was only Zolfi and procurement manager Fleur Meshkeh Kar who stayed back – until Zolfi changed her mind, with potentially terrible consequences.

She has a playful presence on Instagram, rarely wearing the traditional hijab head covering except with her team uniform, and customarily clothed in slouchy jeans and t-shirts.

The young midfielder credits her international soccer career to her mother, posting that, ‘I loved football since I was a child and even my mother loved football’.

‘My biggest motivation was because of my mother’s heart, so I continued with this memory,’ she added.

‘Now that I’ve reached this point, I know that I came a large part of this path with her heart. I’m grateful that I came because football has become my whole life and I love it very much. #success #success’.

The tattooed tomboy posed in a series of casual outfits in locations around the world while on tour with her team, grinning against exotic backgrounds including with a wombat at a Perth wildlife centre aged just 18.

Zolfi also appears in just t-shirt and jeans, but with a cap for head coverage in her native city of Tabriz, historically the hub of the Silk Road through ancient Persia.

Her posts are philosophical about her future, posting ‘let go, be free, don’t take it seriously. Everything will be done in time. Sometimes patience is the effort itself’.

She stated ‘I am brave and resilient enough to take on any obstacle in my path’, but that also, ‘be as crazy as you can. This world is not a good place to be sane.’

Zolfi also posted: ‘Don’t worry about the black hearts of people, I only respect people who have a pure heart and pure intentions.’

But she turned her back on a new life in Australia – and that decision had potentially terrible consequences for herself…and the other players who had decided to flee. 

‘Shortly after 10am, I was advised one of the two who had made the decision to stay last night had changed her mind,’ Home Affairs minister Tony Burke told Parliament at Question Time on Wednesday.

‘Unfortunately, in making that decision, she had been advised by her teammates and coach to contact the Iranian embassy and get collected. 

‘As a result of that, it meant that the Iranian embassy now knew the location of where everybody was. 

 ‘I immediately gave the instruction for people to be moved and that’s been dealt with immediately.’

Zolfi is now believed to be catching up with the rest of the squad on her way back to Iran, flying from Malaysia to Turkey before a perilous overland drive back into the warzone of the Middle East.

The fate of the pair – and the rest of the squad, and the coaching staff who allowed the six others to defect – remains worryingly uncertain.