SAEDNEWS: A Spanish journalist has criticized the meaningful silence of Western and American media regarding the return of Iran’s women’s national football team to their country.
According to SAEDNEWS, “Iranian women footballers were only important when they aligned with the mainstream (American) narrative.” This was the reaction of Leila Hamed, a journalist for the Spanish publication Marca, to what she described as the silence and censorship surrounding the return of Iran’s women’s national football team to their homeland in Western and American media outlets. This unusual silence comes despite the fact that last week requests for asylum by several female footballers during the height of the war had become the top story across Western and American media.
The situation began when monarchist circles in Australia pressured and threatened some Iranian female footballers to seek asylum in Australia. In a surprising turn of events, U.S. President Trump—who had been accused of killing 168 Iranian schoolgirls and schoolboys—saw the situation as an opportunity to shift public attention in his favor and repeatedly commented on the possible asylum of some of these footballers on social media.
However, the anti‑revolution project, carried out with the cooperation of Western and American media propaganda, collapsed in less than a week when most of the female footballers withdrew their asylum requests and decided to return to their homeland.
Yesterday, the convoy of Iran’s women’s national football team returned to the country and was welcomed warmly by officials and members of the public. Yet the same Western and American media outlets that had published hundreds of reports and stories about these players last week have now fallen completely silent and are no longer reporting on them. For this reason, Leila Hamed, the Spanish journalist, said: “They are no longer useful to them, and the story only mattered when it matched their narrative.”
