Marched back to face the regime: Female Iranian footballers returning from Australia are led through Kuala Lumpur airport by ‘handlers’ after Tehran warned it has ‘fingers on the trigger’ to deal with dissent
Members of the Iranian women’s football team have been led through Kuala Lumpur airport by ‘handlers’ on their way home, following their participation in the Asia Cup in Australia where they refused to sing the national anthem.
One conservative commentator in Iran labelled the group ‘wartime traitors’ and called for harsh punishment, fuelling fears the women would be persecuted if they returned home.
This comes as Iran has warned it has its ‘finger on the trigger’ to deal with any anti-government protests, as Tehran is clamping further down on internal dissent.
Regime officials issued the stark warning days after US President Donald Trump exhorted Iranian citizens to rise up and overthrow their government.
Speaking on state television, Iran’s police chief Ahmadreza Radan said that ‘anyone taking into streets at the enemy’s request will be confronted as an enemy not protestor.’
‘All our security forces have their fingers on the trigger,’ he added.
The Islamic republic has also arrested dozens of people, including a foreign national, accused of spying for the country’s ‘enemies,’ the Intelligence Ministry said on Tuesday.
The new threats have sparked worry surrounding the fate of the Iranian women, who boarded their flight from Sydney late Tuesday evening.
Pictured: Iranian team members arriving at Kuala Lumpur Airport on their way back to Iran, where they face possible severe reprisals for their anthem boycott
Pictured: Members of the Iranian women’s team who accepted Australia’s offer of asylum and were granted humanitarian visas
One disturbing video published online on Tuesday appeared to show players forcing their teammate onto a bus
Australia offered the team asylum after word of their protest reached Iran, but only six players and one procurement manager accepted.
Five players escaped the team’s hotel on the Gold Coast and were given the visas by the Federal Government on Monday, with another two team members seeking and being given asylum on Tuesday.
Meanwhile in one disturbing video published online on Tuesday, one player appeared to be forced onto a bus by her teammates as they prepared to leave Australia.
This came after viral social media videos seemed to show a player flashing an SOS signal as the team departed their final match against the Philippines on Sunday.
After the match, about 200 protesters surrounded the team bus, banging on it and chanting ‘let them go’ as police pushed the crowd back.
Some of the protesters carried the Lion and Sun flag, which predates the 1979 Islamic Revolution and is used today as a symbol of resistance against the current regime.
During the chaos, at least one Iranian player reportedly tucked her thumb into her palm and folded her fingers down over it – the internationally recognised sign that someone is pleading for help.
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said on Wednesday that department officials met with all players and most of the team’s management to offer them the opportunity to stay.
‘In Sydney … it was simply themselves, the Department of Home Affairs and an interpreter, and they were given a choice,’ Burke said.
‘What we made sure of was that there was no rushing. There was no pressure. Everything was about ensuring the dignity of those individuals to make a choice.’
However, the women, who had been taken to a safe house in Queensland, had to evacuate on Wednesday after one team member changed her mind and contacted the Iranian embassy.
She asked to be picked up, revealing the location of the other asylum seekers in the process.
Burke said: ‘As a result of that it meant the Iranian embassy now knew the location of where everybody was,’
‘I immediately gave them instructions for people to be moved and that has been dealt with immediately.’
Now, senior Iranian government and football officials have accused Australia of taking the asylum-seeking women’s players ‘hostage’.
The regime also issued a message personally addressed to the players who did choose to leave Australia, which said: ‘Dear ladies… Iran awaits you with open arms. Do not worry. Return home.’
In bizarre comments to a media outlet affiliated with the country’s notorious Revolutionary Guard, Football Federation Chief Mehdi Taj claimed Prime Minister Anthony Albanese ordered police to stop Iranian players leaving the country.
Iranian Football Federation president Mehdi Taj (pictured) has launched an unhinged attack on Australia, accusing the government of abducting and taking players from the national women’s team hostage
Pictured: Iranian players refusing to sing the national anthem during their first Asian Cup match on March 2
Taj also blasted protesters who attempted to stop the team’s bus from leaving their hotel on Tuesday afternoon (pictured)
‘After the game, unfortunately, the Australian police came and intervened, removing one or two of the players from the hotel, according to the news we have,’ Taj told Iran’s Tasnim News Agency on Wednesday.
He then tried to tie the decision to grant asylum to the air strike on a girls’ school that killed 168 people in Iran during the opening days of the war.
‘They martyred our girls in Minab, 160 of them, and in this incident they are taking our girls hostage,’ Taj said.
‘They did a terrible thing. Last night, some people came and lay down in front of the car they were driving to the airport,’ he continued, referring to protesters who tried to stop the team’s bus from leaving their Gold Coast hotel on Tuesday afternoon.
‘They [Australian protesters] completely blocked them at the gate and told everyone to become refugees.’
The players’ plight drew the attention of Donald Trump, who released a social media statement telling Australia to keep the women safe before having a 2am phone conversation with Albanese about the matter.
Taj said: ‘The US president himself … tweeted two tweets about a women’s team [saying] “we welcome them and that they should become refugees”.
‘He threatened Australia that “if you don’t grant them asylum, I will give them asylum in the US.”
The US president spoke last week of how the Iranian people’s hour of freedom was at hand and of America backing them with overwhelming strength.
‘Now is the time to seize control of your destiny, and to unleash the prosperous and glorious future that is close within your reach,’ he said.
This is the moment for action,’ he told the Iranian people. ‘Do not let it pass.’
On Thursday, he called for the ‘unconditional surrender’ of the regime, and were they to do so he promised to ‘Make Iran Great Again’.
‘Now is the time to stand up for the Iranian people and help take back your country,’ he urged.
However, despite some Iranians openly celebrating Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s death in joint US-Israeli air strikes, there has been little sign of further protest in Iran during the war.
Iranians attend an anti-government protest in Tehran, Iran, Friday, Jan. 9
Dozens of bodies lying on the ground at the Tehran Province Forensic Diagnostic and Laboratory Centre in Kahrizak, as grieving relatives search for their loved ones
30,000 Iranians are believed to have been killed in the January protests that rocked the country.
And now, alongside the brutality on the ground, a propaganda campaign is being waged by the regime, with mass text messages now being reportedly sent to Iranian phones.
One calls on anyone observing ‘any suspicious or security-related activity [to] please report it to the IRGC Intelligence Organization through the 114 telephone system’.
Another text threatens: ‘Any movement that disrupts security will be considered direct cooperation with the enemy, and will be dealt with firmly by your sons in the IRGC Intelligence Organization.’
Charlie Gammell, a historian and former diplomat, who worked on the Iran desk at the Foreign Office, told The Spectator: ‘The IRGC is sending very menacing messages to people, saying that if you protest against the regime, that’s it, we are not taking any prisoners.
‘So, they have taken a step up from what happened in January. And that’s the question I had when Donald Trump said march out on to the streets and overthrow the regime. With what?’
