Australia's Minister for Home Affairs Tony Burke with members of the Iranian national women's soccer team who declared asylum in Australia on March 10, 2026. Australia Ministry of Home Affairs via AP Lefty advocates for women in sports like Megan Rapinoe, Jemele Hill and Keith Olbermann — who normally race toward open microphones to fulminate about Trump, trans kids, ICE and pay equity — are remarkably quiet over the plight of the Iranian women’s soccer team.
These brave footballers held their ground at an Asian Cup match in Brisbane last week, refusing to sing the anthem of the brutal Islamic Republic, fresh off slaughtering tens of thousands of heroic protesters demonstrating against the despotic regime.
Facing threats of severe punishment, including possibly death, and denunciation from Iranian state media, the team grimly sang along and saluted the hated flag in their next matches, but Aussie supporters caught wind of the women’s fear of returning to Iran.
Some of the team — under tight control by their minders — reportedly gave signals of distress to locals through the windows of their bus.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese offered to provide asylum for any of the 26 teammates who wanted it, and Home Minister Tony Burke announced, “Australia has taken the Iranian women’s soccer team into our hearts.”
Supporting such heroes should be a no-brainer for western spokespeople for human rights, especially from the sporting world.
As of late Tuesday, seven of the women had chosen to stay in Oz, including one who at the last minute refused to board a plane home and another who opted out not long before.
The rest headed home in tears, likely fearing the consequences for their loved ones if they’d refused to go.
Throughout, the usual chatterboxes on the left have kept shtum.
Team USA soccer champ Megan Rapinoe couldn’t shut up last month about how the gold medalist US men’s hockey team were “clowns” for joking around with Trump.
But she’s had nothing to say about her Iranian sisters whose return will be far less amusing, to be sure.
Sportswriter Jemele Hill — who once said rooting for the Boston Celtics is like feeling sorry for Hitler — has lots to say about Iran and how Trump is bungling the war.
Yet she’s had zip to say about the women’s soccer team facing torture and execution.
One-time ESPN, one-time MSNBC and one-time “GQ YouTube channel” Trump-deranged commentator Keith Olbermann loves to praise transwomen in sports and call critics like swimmer Riley Gaines “nasty” and “stupid.”
Now he’s uncharacteristically quiet after actual women in sports took a stand against tyranny — and now face the tyrants’ wrath.
Nobody is obliged to speak up about world politics or heroic women athletes or freedom of conscience, but it’s striking when public figures who yap about this stuff all the time choose to say nothing about something that really matters.
