“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. These people must be dealt with more severely.
“This is no longer just a symbolic protest move or the like. In a war situation, in this state of affairs, where they strike and martyr students and seven-to-eight-year-old girls in schools, where they attack the neonatal ward of a hospital, where they hit stadiums.
“For you to go there and not sing the national anthem; this is the pinnacle of dishonour and lack of patriotism. Both the people and the officials should treat these individuals as wartime traitors, not as if they just had a protest or performed a symbolic act. The stigma of dishonour and betrayal must remain on their foreheads, and separately they must be dealt with properly.”
Independent Iranian journalist and political analyst, Ali Bornaei, warned the Australian government that the team’s lives were “in imminent danger”.
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“In Iran, ‘treason’ is a capital offence punishable by death,” Bornaei posted on X, tagging Australia’s minister for foreign affairs, Penny Wong. “These athletes face arbitrary detention and execution if forced to return.
“I urgently call on the Australian Government to provide immediate asylum and protection for these brave women. Australia must not allow them to be sent back to a regime that views a silent protest as a crime worthy of the gallows.”
The women’s about-face was a repeat of what happened with the Iranian men’s football team at the Qatar 2022 World Cup, when players did not sing before their opener against England but did before their next game against Wales.
