Iran’s covert activity intolerable

Days after the government raised Australia’s terror alert from “possible” to “probable”, ASIO director-general Mike Burgess highlighted the security risks posed by foreign countries interfering in the nation’s domestic affairs. In an ABC interview he mentioned just one country of at least three – Iran – because in February last year former home affairs minister Clare O’Neil told the public of an Iranian surveillance plot foiled by ASIO. The security chief also condemned Iranian ambassador Ahmad Sadeghi for describing Israel last week as a “Zionist plague” and referring to Hamas’s commitment to the “wiping out” of Israel by 2027 as a “heavenly and divine promise”. The ambassador’s words, Mr Burgess said, were “a classic, terrible example of actually inappropriate, unacceptable language that can actually drive violence in our society”.

The Albanese government was too
weak-kneed in responding to the ambassador. Instead of sending Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade bureaucrat Marc Innes-Brown, a former ambassador to Iran, to speak to Mr Sadeghi, the ambassador should have been called in for a ministerial dressing down. The mild censure contrasted with the government’s dressing-down of Israeli ambassador Amir Maimon in June over his government’s conduct in the war in Gaza, delivered by Assistant Foreign Minister Tim Watts.

Far from confining itself to plotting the downfall of Israel through its terrorist and military proxies Hezbollah and Hamas and continuing its nuclear program, Iran increasingly is interested in surveillance and interference in the West. On Saturday the Trump campaign in the US said some of its internal communications had been hacked and suggested Iran was responsible. Campaign documents “were obtained illegally from foreign sources hostile to the United States, intended to interfere with the 2024 election and sow chaos throughout our Democratic process”, campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said. US spy agencies said last month that Iran was attempting to harm Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in covert online influence operations, fearing a win by the Republican would inflame Tehran’s relations with Washington.

In a speech at the Australian National University National Security College last year, Ms O’Neil revealed ASIO had disrupted Iranian agents in Australia stalking a dissident family. Aggression over the past 10 months in Australia shows the propensity of extremists sympathetic to Iranian proxy Hamas to disrupt life in this country. Covert interference by Iran is as intolerable as that by China or other nations.