How Iran exported terror across the world to target Australian Jews
Until that time, Iran’s nefarious activities in Australia were believed to be limited to harassing Iranians here who opposed the regime in Tehran and promoting Iran’s “Khomeinist” brand of fundamentalist Islam. That level of intimidation by pro-Iranian stepped up after October 7 with more threats directed at people, businesses and places of worship, but there was no hint of the horror that was to come.
So when a fire was lit at Bondi’s Lewis Continental Kitchen at 4am on October 20, 2024, it was treated initially as another anti-Semitic attack presumably conceived by anti-Israeli activists rather than something larger.
When it was followed by the firebombing of the Adass synagogue in Melbourne on December 6, ASIO and the Australian Federal Police counter terror squad detected a troubling pattern – the intersection of organised crime gangs offshore and a foreign state to commit anti-Semitic acts.
In late January, then AFP chief commissioner Reece Kershaw said: “We are looking into whether overseas actors or individuals have paid local criminals in Australia to carry out some of these crimes in our suburbs.”
By the following month ASIO director-general Mike Burgess, was already homing in on the possible involvement of Iran, although he did not name it at the time. The modus operandi appeared to be that orders were given overseas to conduct an attack in Australia using offshore organised crime connections, ensuring that those who actually lit the fires and threw the petrol bombs were low-level paid crooks with no notion about the crime gang or the country actually behind the operation. In February Burgess said his agency was closely watching cases overseas, including in the US, where foreign states had used criminal proxies to carry out attacks.
“I can assure you, if you are in such an organisation or you’re a criminal proxy and you’re being used by a foreign state, you don’t have to deal with law enforcement now you’ve got my agency to deal with, and that’s probably not welcome news to those individuals,” Burgess said at the time.
On Tuesday, he elaborated further: “It’s a layer cake of cut-outs between the IRGC and the person or the alleged perpetrators conducting crimes. In between them, they tap into a number of people – agents of IRGC, and people that they know in the criminal world – and work through them. There’s an organised crime element offshore in this. But that’s not to suggest organised crime are doing it.”
Cutting through this layer cake and proving those links beyond doubt proved fiendishly difficult.
Only after another six months, with two of the three people who carried out the Adass Synagogue attack now arrested, did Burgess have enough evidence to accuse publicly Iran of masterminding anti-Semitic attacks here. “These are painstakingly long investigations. It’s taken us this long to have the evidence to actually know the Iranians directed these attacks,” he said on Tuesday.
The ASIO chief believes Iran has likely masterminded more of the spate of anti-Semitic attacks in Australia since October 7, 2023, although he insists that other attacks have also occurred without Iran’s involvement.
A key driver of the Tehran regime’s influence in Australia is the Al-Mustafa University in Iran which receives direct funding from the Office of the Supreme Leader to spread Iranian theology overseas, including in Australia.
Lakemba in Sydney, which has a large number of Shia, is considered the ground zero of Iranian influence in Australia.
Internationally active NGO AhlulBayt is also believed to play a key role, arranging pro-Iranian seminars and speakers and taking directions from Tehran and raising funds for Iranian causes.
The Albanese government has previously criticised Iran’s espionage activities, saying last year it was “concerned by reports of harassment and monitoring of people in Australia by foreign governments, including Iran”.
The Iranian government stepped up harassment of Iranian-Australian dissidents after the 2022 uprising of street protests in Iran. Former home affairs minister Clare O’Neil said last year of Iran “we have here someone living in our country who is being followed, watched, photographing their home being invaded by people at the direction of a foreign power”.
Despite this, the government chose to maintain diplomatic ties with Iran, even as the opposition called for the IRGC to be listed as a terror organisation and for ambassador Ahmad Sadeghi to be expelled after he praised assassinated Hezbollah terrorist leader, Hassan Nasrallah. Ironically Sadeghi called on Australia to criticise Israel in June when it bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities, claiming that Australia should speak out because it had such “friendly” relations with Iran.
Canberra kept the Australian embassy in Iran open when many other countries had closed theirs because it provided a useful communications channel with the regime. Australia acted as a critically important conduit in Iran between the US, which does not have diplomatic relations with Iran, and Tehran.
Australia suspended its embassy operations in Iran in June during the 12 Day War between Israel and Iran, but reopened it briefly in July, before closing it for good ahead of this week’s announcement to ensure the safety of diplomatic staff.
Confirmation by the government that Iran was directing anti-Semitic attacks in Australia made the decision to expel its ambassador an easy one. It will be a long time before he is invited back. Iran, the world’s most ruthless exporter of terrorism, has exported it across the world to Australia, undermining social cohesion and reminding us why the fight against terrorism abroad and anti-Semitism at home is so important.
It took less than 12 months after Hamas’ massacre of Israelis on October 7, 2023, for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps to decide to turn Iran’s soft-power operations in Australia into something far more dangerous.