Australia's citizenship for asylum-seeking Iranian footballers Fatemeh Pasandideh and Atefeh Ramezanisadeh shouldn’t be dwarfed by the US-Iran conflict. Their story reveals what happens to women who challenge State-enforced religious repression. Iran executed 241 women between 2010 and 2024. Nineteen more have been executed this year. Women on death row have been denied independent lawyers, kept in solitary confinement and tortured for forced confessions. Human rights monitors have also recorded hundreds of women killed by security forces during protests. Pasandideh and Ramezanisadeh refused to sing Iran’s anthem and were branded traitors. Australia gave them a way out. The war should not deter the world from opening a humanitarian front against Iran’s repression of women.
