Makes no sense: still mixed up on Mideast terror

Why the Albanese government is finding it so hard to do the right thing and boot out Iran’s serially undiplomatic and highly offensive ambassador, Ahmad Sadeghi, is, as Alex Ryvchin of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry said on Monday, “perplexing”. It may be, as Anthony Albanese argued last month, that the government believes it to be in Australia’s national interest to shy away from taking any firm or decisive action that upsets our relationship with the oppressive regime in Tehran. But that makes no sense when Mr Sadeghi’s latest outrageous outburst on the weekend showed he has learned nothing from the formal warnings he has been given about his previous conduct.

Having called slain Hezbollah terrorist leader Hassan Nasrallah a “remarkable leader” and “blessed martyr”, Mr Sadeghi’s latest odious claptrap was to label last Saturday’s retaliatory strike by Israel against Iran as a “terrorist attack” that was the work of the “lawless Zionist enemy”.

As opposition foreign affairs spokesman Simon Birmingham said, such nonsense from an ambassador accredited to serve in our country – like the insulting language Mr Sadeghi has used previously – shows a total “disregard for the values and laws of Australia, along with the expectations we have of guests in our country”.

That is especially true of an ambassador, even when, as in this case, he represents a pariah nation such as Iran, which has a grotesque human rights record and is in effect running the terrorist war against Israel aimed at annihilating the Jewish state and killing all Jews. Australia’s national interest lies not in allowing Mr Sadeghi to continue offending Australians but in defending our Australian values. The same goes for Foreign Minister Penny Wong amid startling new disclosures about the degree to which the UNRWA refugee agency remains infected by Hamas terrorist operatives. On Thursday last week, according to the Times of Israel, the UNRWA had to acknowledge that Muhammad Abu Attawi, a commander of Hamas’s crack Nukhba special forces unit, part of its Al-Qassam Brigades military wing, who was killed by Israel last Wednesday, was a UNRWA staffer.

The UNRWA’s admission should prompt serious new doubts about the Albanese government’s decision to restore funding to the UN agency. No less should Mr Sadeghi’s latest undiplomatic and highly offensive outburst make Mr Albanese and Senator Wong reconsider their reluctance to give him the boot. It’s time for them to show some ticker.