If you’ve ever wondered what state-sponsored coercive control looks like, look no further than the tragic predicament of the Iranian women’s soccer team.
It’s extraordinary that Australians are witnessing the Iranian players apparently being surveilled and intimidated by members of their own government after they came to our country in peace to play soccer with our beloved Matildas and other Asia Cup teams.
According to reports, the women are being watched and controlled by members of the Iranian government, possibly the notorious Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, who have come as part of the Iranian tour entourage.
Iranian activists in Australia say the women are in mortal danger, having staged what seems to have been a silent protest against their regime last week, when they refused to sing their own national anthem before a match against South Korea.
Following that brave act of peaceful resistance, Iranian state television presenter Mohammad Reza Shahbazi accused the team of dishonour, branding them “wartime traitors” who must be “dealt with more severely”.
Coming from the mouthpiece of a government that in January slaughtered tens of thousands of its citizens as they protested on the streets, that’s not even a veiled threat.
Watching the Iranian women play against the Matildas on Thursday felt strange and somehow wrong.
Unlike the other Asia Cup matches, which have been hard-fought and full of joy for the game, it was impossible not to notice that we were watching victims of a brutal patriarchal regime playing under duress.
In the Gold Coast humidity, the women looked physically uncomfortable.
They had a lot of injuries. They yanked irritably at their long-sleeve shirts and leggings, worn underneath their regular soccer kit so as not to display any flesh.
But the misery on their faces was way worse – they took no pleasure in the game, and did not score.
The team has not won any matches and has not scored a single point during the tournament.
On Sunday night, as their bus pulled out from a bank of media and sympathetic protesters following their final match, one of the women appeared to make an “SOS” sign, which cameras captured.
It was an incredibly tragic gesture from women who are in a dire situation, unthinkable to any Australian – they know they face vicious, state-sponsored punishment if they return, but if they somehow seek asylum in Australia, the consequences for their families in Iran could be the worst possible.
Some of the group are believed to be mothers with children back in Iran.
The team arrived in Australia about two days before the United States attacked their homeland.
Since then, none of them have been able to contact loved ones at home or gain assurances about their safety.
This extraordinary geopolitical drama is playing out on Australia’s sovereign territory; we are watching the tactics of the Iranian state unfold in our country, and yet we are mostly powerless to do anything about it.
This is a country with which we have severed diplomatic relations; it is a country that sponsored terrorism on our shores.
The Albanese government has been discreet on the matter of the women’s potential asylum claim. Any action taken on that front needs to happen behind closed doors.
But more generally, the government has tried to walk a dubiously fine line on the conflict so far – offering support for the toppling of the theocratic regime, but then expressing a desire for de-escalation of the conflict.
The rhetoric seems aimed at keeping the Trump administration on side, while insisting to the Australian public that we are not really involved in the war, which experts consider illegal.
But Australian personnel were aboard the US submarine that torpedoed an Iranian ship moored in international waters off Sri Lanka. We have been asked to assist some of the Gulf States targeted by Iranian drone attacks.
The AUKUS pact tethers us to the United States indefinitely, both militarily and geopolitically. Increased petrol and fertiliser prices are about to worsen inflation for all consumers, and the Australian sharemarket lost more than $110 billion in morning trade.
And now, innocent women from Iran are apparently being menaced by their state chaperones under the noses of all Australians.
