While you were sleeping, Donald Trump was on the phone with Anthony Albanese.
The US president wanted to know why Australia was going to allow members of the Iranian women’s soccer team to be forced back to Iran following their Asian Cup campaign.
“Australia is making a terrible humanitarian mistake by allowing the Iran National Woman’s Soccer team to be forced back to Iran, where they will most likely be killed,” he wrote on social media. “Don’t do it, Mr. Prime Minister, give ASYLUM. The U.S. will take them if you won’t.”
It seems Trump’s views on the matter were coloured by a social media post from Australian political activist Drew Pavlou, a mischief-maker best known for his criticism of the Chinese Communist Party.
The post claimed the Albanese government “inexplicably dragged their feet” on aiding the women, while also “trying to get ISIS brides back on planes to Australia”.
Fifteen minutes after Trump issued his demand, his account posted a screenshot of Pavlou’s post, adding a one-word instruction: “ASYLUM!”
That post was made at 1.30am on Tuesday, Canberra time. At some point in the following 90 minutes, Trump and Albanese spoke by phone. It was not immediately clear who initiated the call. The White House has been contacted for comment.
But by the time the two leaders spoke, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke had already arrived in Brisbane, with the five escapees in police protection and expected to be granted bridging visas, allowing them to remain in Australia while their asylum applications are processed.
Evidently, Albanese was able to quickly assuage Trump of his concerns. By 2.55am Canberra time, Trump was singing the PM’s praises.
“He’s on it!” Trump posted. “Five [players] have already been taken care of, and the rest are on their way. Some, however, feel they must go back because they are worried about the safety of their families, including threats to those family members if they don’t return.”
He added that Albanese was doing a good job handling a delicate situation – a recognition the government had been “on it” well before Trump took to the keyboard.
The brief, middle-of-the-night intervention by the US president is telling in a few ways. One, it underlines the power of social media in this administration, where almost everything is conducted out in the open on either X (formerly Twitter) or Trump’s own platform, Truth Social.
It is not the first time a post by Pavlou appears to have galvanised action. In January, the activist tagged US Under Secretary of State Sarah Rogers in a post complaining about elements of the Albanese government’s proposed hate speech laws. She then criticised the bill, calling it “clumsy” and likely to lead to “deeply perverse outcomes”.
Given his apparent influence in the Trump administration, it is ironic that Pavlou says he was refused entry to Trump’s America and deported last month over his posts claiming that he was going to move into singer Billie Eilish’s Los Angeles home to test “her theory of land ownership”.
Pavlou says he was detained at LAX for 30 hours before being sent back to Australia. But a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security told The New York Post: “Claims that this individual’s admissibility was tied to external reports regarding Billie Eilish are false.”
Moreover, Trump’s attempt to intervene on behalf of the Iranian soccer players reveals a level of hypocrisy. The Trump administration has reversed decades of policy by deporting Iranians back to their country from the US, despite the persecution they will likely face there.
The first deportation flight left in late September, under a deal cut with the regime in Tehran. Of course, Trump has since waged war with that regime, killing supreme leader Ali Khamenei and dozens of other senior officials.
The administration has reportedly sent at least three plane loads of Iranians back to Iran, including Christian converts, ethnic minorities and political dissidents. “At least eight people from the first flight begged not to be sent to Iran because they were scared for their lives,” said a Senate report written by Democrats last month.
At least one deportation flight occurred in January, after the widespread anti-regime protests in Iran that led Trump to promise “help is on its way”.
According to Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, the administration nearly deported two gay men back to Iran, where they could have faced the death penalty for sodomy, but were saved by last-minute legal intervention.
In those circumstances, it would be a perverse outcome indeed if Trump were allowed to claim credit for saving the Iranian soccer players in Australia.
Read more on the US-Israel-Iran war:
Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for our weekly What in the World newsletter.
Michael Koziol is the North America correspondent for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. He is a former Sydney editor, Sun-Herald deputy editor and a federal political reporter in Canberra.Connect via X or email.