Hear them roar

By keeping their mouths shut, members of Iran’s national women’s soccer team spoke volumes.

As the United States and Israel teamed up to topple the oppressive Islamic regime that had ruled their homeland with an iron fist for nearly a half-century, Iran’s female footballers were representing their country at the Asian Football Confederation’s (AFC) Women’s Cup tournament in Australia. While their Persian sisters were letting their hair down—literally—by ripping off their hijabs and dancing in the streets to celebrate the death of the ruthless Ayatollah Ali Khamanei, several players kept their hijabs on lest they face repercussions at home.

Some had the audacity to allow at least some of their hair to peek out from underneath the hood-like black head coverings. Others left their heads uncovered entirely. Had the players done those things mere months ago, Iran’s morality police might have dragged them off to a detention center in Tehran, beaten them to death, then claimed they’d died of a heart attack.

That’s what happened to 22-year-old Jina Mahsa Amini in 2022 after she showed too much hair, sparking a wave of demonstrations against Iranian authorities’ brutal oppression of women. Iranian authorities responded by killing more than 400 protesters.

Even more audacious, though, was the female players’ refusal to sing the Iranian national anthem before their tournament-opening match against South Korea. Their counterparts on Iran’s men’s national soccer team had done the same thing before a match against England at the 2022 Federation Internationale de Football Association’s (FIFA) World Cup tournament in Qatar. Iran’s government responded to that little stunt by reportedly threatening the country’s soccer players and their families with imprisonment and torture if the players refused to sing before the kickoff of their ensuing match against Wales. The men understandably sang their country’s anthem before that match, albeit half-heartedly. And some may have even lip-synched, the news outlet VOA Persian reported at the time.

Like the men, the Iranian women changed their tune—or, to be more accurate, started singing it—before losses to Australia and the Philippines at the AFC Women’s Cup. Those losses, coupled with their tournament-opening defeat by South Korea, eliminated Iran from the tournament.

Still, the women’s refusal to sing the Iranian anthem before their loss to South Korea remains remarkable—and perhaps put them in greater peril. While Iran’s government is reeling due to the strikes that the United States and Israel have launched, it hasn’t been overthrown yet. In fact, the government has installed Ayatollah Khamenei’s 56-year-old son Mojtaba as its new supreme leader. Even though President Trump has called Mojtaba a “lightweight” compared to his father, the fact that the younger Khamenei worked behind the scenes for much of his father’s reign suggests that the proverbial apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree.

Five members of Iran’s women’s soccer team thus saw fit to seek asylum in Australia. The Australian government initially granted them humanitarian visas, but granted them full-fledged asylum within days.

“Last night I was able to tell five women from the Iranian women’s soccer team that they are welcome to stay in Australia, to be safe and have a home here,” Australian Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke reportedly wrote Tuesday on X.

Prompting from President Trump may have had something to do with that.

“Australia is making a terrible humanitarian mistake by allowing the Iranian National Women’s Soccer team to be forced back to Iran, where they will most likely be killed,” the president wrote on Truth Social. “Don’t do it, Mr. Prime Minister, give ASYLUM. The U.S. will take them if you won’t.”

Two other members of Iran’s delegation—a player and a team staffer—have since accepted offers of asylum in the Land Down Under, Fox News reported. Others, however, returned to Iran due to fears for their families’ safety.

The saga of Iran’s women’s soccer team throws into sharp focus the contrast between the oppression the Iranian people endure and the faux oppression leftists complain about here in the United States. Multiple leftist politicians and entertainers have labeled President Trump a dictator or a fascist, accusing him of trampling on the rights of women, minorities, LGBTQ individuals, and immigrants, legal and otherwise. There has been no shortage of “No Kings” protests and demonstrations against the president’s actions in dethroning dictators in Iran and Venezuela.

Funny: Here in the United States, those leftists are allowed to protest freely and have done so without reprisal from President Trump. In Iran, the government has slaughtered at least 30,000 protesters and arrested more than 50,000 others, according to multiple news outlets—and those numbers are almost certainly growing as Iran’s regime fights to remain in power.

In the United States, female Olympic medalists can skip trips to the White House to express displeasure with their government’s leadership. In Iran, they could die for expressing such displeasure.

Our countries are not the same.