As Iran’s exiled prince, I fear for the women Australia couldn’t save

The images from the Gold Coast will stay with us: Iranian female footballers on a bus, pressing the international SOS hand signal against the windows. Filming the crowd through the glass. At least one player crying as security guards escorted her aboard. Hundreds of Iranian-Australians surrounding the vehicle, lying in front of it, chanting: “Save our girls.” These women were fighting to be seen. And the world saw them.

It started on March 2, when the Iranian women’s national football team refused to sing the Islamic Republic’s anthem before their opening Asian Cup match against South Korea. State television branded them traitors. Then the security handlers who had accompanied the squad did what the Islamic Republic always does: they applied pressure through harassment. The players were kept under constant surveillance, denied access to lawyers or independent support, and reportedly threatened with consequences for themselves and their families. Before their next two matches, the women sang the anthem and saluted.

As I write, seven members of the squad have chosen to remain in Australia. Five players were granted humanitarian visas after Australian Federal Police carried out a covert operation to extract them from their hotel. My office has been informed that the five have announced they are joining Iran’s Lion and Sun Revolution. A sixth player and a staff member have also sought asylum. The rest of the team has been flown to Kuala Lumpur, eventually en route to Iran.

I want the world to understand what is happening to the women on that flight. Their families have already been threatened. The regime’s attorney-general urged them to “return with calm and confidence”, language every Iranian recognises as a warning. The sports minister claimed “enemies” had tried to “distract” the players with “tempting offers”.

Australia granted humanitarian visas to five players and extended the offer to the entire squad. That mattered. But democratic governments must understand something about how the Islamic Republic operates. It controls people through fear, through threats to families, through handlers and surveillance and coercion. A regime with that kind of grip on its citizens requires more than an open door. The international community has to actively create the conditions in which a genuine choice becomes possible.

The women who went back are not safe. The regime may stage a public reconciliation. Do not believe it. The Islamic Republic’s pattern is consistent: threats first, a performance of mercy, then quiet retribution once the cameras move on.

These women are part of a pattern that should shame every international sporting body into action. Over 30 Iranian athletes have defected in recent years. Chess grandmaster Mitra Hejazipour was expelled from the national team for removing her hijab at a tournament and now plays for France. Kimia Alizadeh, the first Iranian woman to win an Olympic medal, fled because she refused to be part of what she called the regime’s “hypocrisy and lies”. Wrestler Navid Afkari was executed for attending a protest. At the Paris Olympics, Iran had 14 athletes on the Refugee Olympic Team, the largest contingent of any nation.

The SOS signals from that bus on the Gold Coast meant the same thing as every one of those departures. For 47 years, the Islamic Republic has tried to own Iranian women’s bodies, voices, and choices. These young women, on a football pitch on the other side of the world, refused. And they will not be the last.

I urge FIFA and the Asian Football Confederation to accept responsibility for athletes who participated in their tournament. Governments should sanction the Islamic Republic Football Federation officials who kept these women under surveillance and coercion in Australia. I ask everyone watching to remember their names and refuse to let this story disappear. The regime counts on the world moving on. Do not let it. And I ask the international community to see clearly what a regime that surveils, coerces and threatens its own athletes has become.

Australia did something important this week. The democratic world must now decide whether it will match these women’s courage with action. Women won’t be safe in Iran until this regime has gone. Only a secular democratic government and a new constitution, determined by the Iranian people themselves, will lead to the fundamental change millions are demanding.

Reza Pahlavi is the exiled crown prince of Iran, based in the US. He is a leader of the Iranian democratic opposition.