Gold Coast, Australia — The Iranian women’s soccer team left Australia minus seven of its members who were granted asylum, after tearful protests of their departure at Sydney Airport and frantic final efforts inside the terminal by Australian officials who sought to ensure the women understood they were being offered asylum.

As the team’s flight time drew nearer and they passed through security late Tuesday, each woman was taken aside to meet alone with officials who explained through interpreters that they could choose not to return to Iran.

Seven other women earlier accepted humanitarian visas allowing them to remain permanently in Australia. Eventually, after what Australian Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke described as “emotional” meetings, no more women accepted the offers of asylum and the team’s flight departed Sydney with all remaining members on board.

The tense and precarious nature of their decisions was underscored Wednesday when Burke announced one of the seven who had stayed behind would return home after all.

“In Australia, people are able to change their mind,” said Burke, who had hours earlier posted photos of the seven women granted humanitarian visas to his social media accounts, their identities clearly visible.

It was a dramatic conclusion to an episode that has gripped Australia since the Iranian team’s first game at the Asian Cup soccer tournament, when they remained silent during their national anthem. The players sang the anthem before subsequent games and haven’t publicly disclosed their views or explained their actions.

Their silence was cast as a gesture of defiance or protest by some, and an act of mourning by others.

“When those players were silent at the start of their first match in Australia, that silence was heard as a roar all around the world,” Burke said. “We responded by saying, the invitation is there. In Australia you can be safe.”

The team arrived in Australia last month, before the Iran war began Feb. 28. Iran was knocked out of the tournament over the weekend and the squad faced the prospect of returning to a country under bombardment.

The women’s fate captured international attention as Iranian Australian groups warned they could face dire consequences from Iran’s theocratic government for failing to sing the anthem, even as the players remained silent on the gesture’s meaning or their own concerns about returning. There was further outrage in Australia on Wednesday after news outlets published a photo that appeared to show a women being led by the wrist by a teammate to the bus bound for the airport, another squad member’s hand at her shoulder.

President Trump waded into the matter Monday, criticizing the Australian government for not offering the women asylum and  saying in a post on his Truth Social platform, “The U.S. will take them if you won’t.”

It emerged the next day that discussions between Australian officials and the women had already been unfolding privately.

Meanwhile, an Iranian official rejected suggestions that the women weren’t safe to go home.

“Iran welcomes its children with open arms and the government guarantees their security,” Iranian first Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref said Tuesday. “No one has the right to interfere in the family affairs of the Iranian nation and play the role of a nanny who is kinder than a mother,” he added.

Iranian state TV said the country’s football federation had asked international soccer bodies to review what it called the U.S. president’s “direct political interference in football,” warning such remarks could disrupt the 2026 World Cup.

Australian officials have sought to assure the public that the women were given every opportunity to stay. But as one woman’s decision to return home despite accepting asylum showed, the reality wasn’t so simple.

After days of overtures from officials, Burke said, the efforts to ensure each team member had the chance to consider asylum offers came down to last-minute discussions at Sydney Airport, where the women were separated from their minders and had time to phone their families before deciding whether to leave.

“Everything was about ensuring the dignity for those individuals to make a choice,” he said. “We couldn’t take away the pressure of the context for these individuals, of what might have been said to them beforehand, what pressures they might have felt there were on other family members.”

No further members of the squad decided to remain in Australia before the flight departed, however, and Burke said “exhausted” officials feared they had failed the women.

“As a nation, what mattered was that we could provide the choice,” he said.

On Wednesday, many newspaper front pages bore a photo of the women who had accepted asylum offers under headlines like “Brave new Aussies.” But just hours later, Burke said that one of the women would return to Iran after conversations with her departed teammates.

“Unfortunately, in making that decision she was advised by her teammates and coach to contact the Iranian embassy and to get collected,” he said. “As a result of that, it meant that the Iranian embassy now knew the location of where everybody was.”

The six women planning to remain in Australia were immediately moved to a different location for security reasons, the minister said. He pledged they would not have to fight a legal battle for permanent residency and would receive health, housing and other support in Australia.

Some of the squad, who officials said had connections to Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, were not offered visas.

“There were some people leaving Australia who I am glad they’re no longer in Australia,” Burke said.

It wasn’t clear exactly how many people were in the delegation, but an official squad list named 26 players, plus coaching and other staff. The Asian Football Confederation, which organized the tournament, confirmed Wednesday that the squad had traveled from Sydney to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where they were staying in a hotel.

“The AFC will provide all necessary support to the team during their stay until their onward travel arrangements are confirmed,” a statement said, adding that the body would “continue to prioritise the welfare and safety of the players and officials.”

The initial five players granted asylum had been staying in a safe location after fleeing their hotel, Iranian opposition figure and exiled crown prince Reza Pahlavi said Sunday.

The office of Pahlavi, whose father, the Western-backed Shah, was ousted during the Islamic Revolution in 1979, said on social media that the “courageous athletes” announced that “they have joined Iran’s national Lion and Sun Revolution” — a reference to the pre-Islamic Revolution flag of Iran — and naming them in the post.

BEIRUT — The Lebanese mother of two had just awakened to prepare the pre-dawn meal before another day of fasting during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan when Israeli warplanes began attacking southern Lebanon in retaliation for rockets and drones launched by Hezbollah.

The family quickly packed up and headed toward Beirut, seeking safety from another deadly war between Israel and Hezbollah. With tens of thousands of others fleeing on that March 2 day, the usually one-hour trip from the southern city of Nabatiyeh took 15 hours.

“I am against giving pretexts to Israel,” said the 45-year-old woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals from the Hezbollah supporters she lives among.

“I am totally against Hezbollah’s decision to start with the first strike,” said the woman, who is now living with her husband, their 17- and 12-year-old children, and her mother-in-law inside a school turned into a shelter in the Lebanese capital.

As Hezbollah enters a new round of fighting with Israel just 15 months after the last Israel-Hezbollah war ended with a November 2024 U.S.-brokered ceasefire, the Iran-backed militant group and political party is facing increasing grassroots discontent within its base and problems with the Lebanese authorities.

On March 2, two days after Israel and the U.S. launched attacks on Iran, igniting a war in the Middle East, Hezbollah fired missiles and drones into Israel for the first time in more than a year.

Hundreds of thousands of residents of southern Lebanon, the eastern Bekaa valley and Beirut’s southern suburbs have fled their homes after Israeli warnings that their neighborhoods, towns and villages would be targeted.

The new round of fighting comes as Shiite communities that suffered the brunt of the last conflict are still reeling from it. The last Israel-Hezbollah war killed more than 4,000 people in Lebanon and caused $11 billion in damage, according to the World Bank.

Unlike in the past, when many people were afraid to publicly criticize Hezbollah, some Lebanese Shiites are openly blaming the militant group for their current misery as they find themselves living in the street, on public squares, or with relatives or friends amid cold weather and fasting during Ramadan.

For Hussein Ali, it was the second time in less than two years that he was forced to leave his house in Beirut’s southern suburb of Haret Hreik. During the last Israel-Hezbollah war, the apartment where he lived was destroyed and now the vegetable vendor is worried the same thing will happen again.

“No one wanted this war,” said the man, who is also staying in the school and relying on aid to survive. “People haven’t recovered from the previous war.”

After the end of Lebanon’s civil war in 1990, militias were required to disarm, but Hezbollah was exempted because it was fighting Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon at the time.

Now the Lebanese government has sought to crack down on the group’s armed wing and end its status as a parallel armed force outside of state control.

The shift was clear when, on March 2, the Lebanese government moved to declare Hezbollah’s military activities illegal, with all but two of the 24 Cabinet ministers voting in favor; only the two Hezbollah ministers voted no. Even ministers from Hezbollah’s strongest ally, the Amal group of Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, voted to approve the measure.

“The government confirms that the decision of war and peace is only in the hand of the state,” Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said, adding that the government “orders the immediate ban on all of Hezbollah’s military activities as they are illegal and it should be forced to hand over its weapons to the Lebanese state.”

The Lebanese army has since begun to crack down and last week arrested three Hezbollah members who were found transporting weapons at a checkpoint. But the men were released on bail Monday.

Government officials have accused Hezbollah of repeatedly taking unilateral military actions that should be under state authority. On Oct. 8, 2023, the group began attacking Israel a day after the assault led by the Iranian-backed Hamas on southern Israel triggered the war in Gaza.

Now, the group has entered the fray on behalf of Iran to avenge the killing of its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as well as in retaliation, it says, for Israeli violations of the November 2024 ceasefire.

Ali al-Amin, a Lebanese journalist who is a harsh critic of Hezbollah, said that while some people are now criticizing the militant group more than in the past, many still remain quiet out of fear for their safety.

“Criticism could have a high cost and not all people express their opinions,” said al-Amin, a Shiite Muslim from south Lebanon, who added that many poor Shiites rely on assistance that could be cut off anytime by Hezbollah or the allied Amal group.

In the past, people who criticized Hezbollah on social media were sometimes roughed up by its supporters and forced to make new videos saying they were wrong.

But the group still has many supporters. They say that Hezbollah’s decision to strike was justified because Israel had not abided by the November 2024 ceasefire.

Since the ceasefire, Israel has continued to carry out almost daily airstrikes against Hezbollah, which have killed about 400 people, including dozens of civilians, and that have also prevented the reconstruction of destroyed areas.

“We cannot tolerate that anymore,” said Ali Saleh who was displaced from a southern village near Nabatiyeh. “I pray for God to protect our young men and make them victorious against Israel.”

Even the Shiite woman who criticized Hezbollah’s move to strike first said that if the militants hadn’t, the result might have been the same.

“If we attack they will attack us and if we don’t attack they would have attacked us,” she said.

Sadek Nabulsi, a political science professor at the Lebanese University whose thinking aligns with Hezbollah, said the latest complaints are nothing new and don’t represent a fissure in grassroots support for the Iranian-allied militants. There was a similar outcry during the 14-month Israel-Hezbollah war that ended in 2024 and the monthlong war in 2006, he said.

“Hezbollah’s base of support is known for … tolerating pain,” Nabulsi said. “If you look at this base of support, despite all the harsh conditions, it is still coherent, patient and waiting for salvation.”