‘Wartime traitors’: Iran state TV condemns women’s soccer team for anthem silence

The Iran women’s soccer team in Australia for the Women’s Asian Cup have been labelled “dishonourable” and accused of “betrayal” on Iranian state television after the players didn’t sing their national anthem before their match on Monday night.

The team and support staff performed their national anthem before Thursday night’s Asian Cup match against Australia, before footage from Iran calling for them to “be dealt with more severely” emerged.

It was a sharp juxtaposition from Monday’s opener against South Korea, before which the players and smiling coach Marziyeh Jafari stood in silence as the Islamic regime’s anthem played, less than 48 hours after US-Israeli rocket attacks killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei.

The silent protest against the Islamic Republic’s regime had been viewed as an act of resistance while under unimaginable pressure, coupled with the distress of being unable to contact their families under a national internet blackout back home.

Alireza Mohebbi, the Australia-based correspondent for Iran International TV, said Thursday’s enthusiastic singing was clearly under instruction from delegation security, believed to be closely affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

“It’s completely obvious that the Islamic Republic’s regime, and the security team which is with the players in Australia, forced them to sing and do the military salute,” Mohebbi told ABC News.

The situation was given a more dangerous context on Friday morning when footage emerged on social media of Iranian state TV presenter Mohammad Reza Shahbazi, known as a radical conservative mouthpiece of the regime, insisting Iran’s squad should feel the full “stigma of dishonour and betrayal”.

“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 Australian Foreign Minister 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 soccer 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.

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