Labor’s Iran blind spot: The cost of deceptive diplomacy
Albanese Labor prides itself on its diplomacy. But in the case of Iran it has delivered meagre gains, truckloads of misjudgements and hollow outcomes for Australia.
Albanese Labor prides itself on its diplomacy. But diplomacy is deceptive – it usually satisfies the practitioner but in the case of Labor and Iran it has delivered meagre gains and truckloads of misjudgements and hollow outcomes for Australia.
Iran has been the subject of political dispute between Labor and the Coalition across a two-year period, over the bilateral relationship and, beyond this, over the Israeli military campaign against Iran and its efforts to dismantle the nuclear facilities. The Coalition has been distinctly tougher: more alert to Iran’s quest to eliminate Israel, more supportive of Israel’s military actions and calling for stronger domestic action by proscribing Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Such divisions were obliterated this week with the historic hardening of Australia’s policy towards Iran by the Albanese government – decisions that were justified, unprecedented and bipartisan. Yet this obscured a complex series of differences within and between parties over how to manage Iran’s behaviour in this country and in the Middle East.
Two years ago Foreign Minister Penny Wong and then Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus successfully countered a push from the Home Affairs Department to list the IRGC as a terrorist organisation. Diplomacy prevailed at the time because severing diplomatic ties would have long-run consequences and branding an organ of the Iranian government a terrorist organisation – which it was – created legal difficulties.
But this week such problems were swept away. Ties with Iran were fundamentally broken. Its character as a purveyor of terrorism was the basis for action. The Iranian ambassador and three staff were expelled; our diplomatic staff in Tehran were removed to a safe third country; the IRGC was listed as a terrorist organisation. Australia followed the action taken by the US in 2019. It was a milestone event for Australia and a significant policy change by Labor.
The juxtaposition cannot be missed. During the current Middle East conflict Albanese Labor has conspicuously failed to support Israel’s military campaign against Iran’s regional aggression – its aim being the elimination of Israel – only to now discover that Iran’s aggression against Australia has forced Labor’s own form of diplomatic retaliation.
The foundation stone for the decision last Monday was ASIO advice that the Iranian government was involved in at least two attacks on Australia – on Lewis’ Continental Kitchen in Sydney on October 20 and the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne on December 6 last year. This is probably just the start. Ministers signalled that Iran was likely implicated in other attacks.
Suddenly, Anthony Albanese appeared in reverse mode: as an anti-Iranian security hardliner, a sharp break from his long critique of Israel and his pro-Palestinian commitment seen in the decision to recognise a Palestinian state.
The optics were dramatic. Albanese listened and acted at once on advice from director-general of security Mike Burgess about Iran’s aggression against this country.
The zeitgeist took a big check. With Australia consumed by anti-Israeli and pro-Palestinian street marches including support for pro-Iranian terrorist proxies, a new paradigm arrived: the Iranians conspire to harm us at home; this is an Iran we cannot tolerate. Yet it is the same Iran where Labor’s diplomacy and strategy have been far too feeble.
The lesson again is the pivotal impact in this world of ASIO and our security agencies. Albanese hitched his decision to ASIO and confidence in the Australian Federal Police under Reece Kershaw. The Prime Minister said ASIO found “clear evidence” and was “very specific” in tracing links from Iran to criminal operations in Australia that conducted the anti-Jewish attacks. Just as ASIO was pivotal in the Coalition’s move against China’s foreign interference, so it is decisive again in Labor’s move on Iran.
This is more serious. Albanese said: “We speak about foreign interference. This is another level. This is foreign action and foreign violence being committed against Australians, funded and using criminal elements here.”
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke, keen on the Palestinian cause, now said: “This is an unprecedented attack on our society. It’s true that no one was injured in these attacks; it is not true that no one was harmed. The community of the Adass Israel Synagogue was harmed, the community that shopped at the Lewis’ Continental Kitchen and the owners were harmed. But simply Australia was attacked and Australia was harmed.”
Burgess warned that for 10 months anti-Semitism had been “one of ASIO’s most pressing priorities” with the security service investigating “dozens of incidents targeting Jewish communities” and individuals. ASIO was investigating other attacks, the implication being Iran’s aggression was even wider. Burgess said the IRGC used a web of proxies to hide its role: “Iran and its proxies literally and figuratively lit the matches and fanned the flames.” Whether Israel’s security service, Mossad, unparalleled in its knowledge of Iran, played any role is unknown.
Relying on ASIO advice, Wong said Iran’s actions “have crossed a line”. That’s true. But it’s also designed to defend the government from not acting two years earlier.
A Senate committee headed by Liberal Claire Chandler recommended in February 2023 that a tougher stance be taken against Iran including branding the IRGC a terrorist organisation and reducing relations “to the greatest extent possible”. Labor was firm in its rejection while documenting the increased sanctions it was taking. The government relied on Attorney-General’s Department advice that the IRGC as an organ of a nation-state was not covered by our Criminal Code. It relied on Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade advice that keeping open the communications lines was the best option. Labor prized working the diplomatic route.
The Senate committee dealt extensively with Iranian dissidents and reports of persecution, arbitrary arrest, torture and murder by the regime against its own people.
From 2023 the Coalition has called for Australia to proscribe the IRGC as a terrorist body. In October 2024 it called for the expulsion of the Iranian ambassador, Ahmad Sadeghi, after he praised the assassinated Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and called for Israel to be wiped out of Palestine.
This week Chandler said: “It shouldn’t have taken until now for the Australian government to act. Throughout the Senate inquiry I heard incredibly concerning reports from Iranian-Australians concerned about their own safety.”
The committee said: “It also acknowledges that there is a significant fear of the IRGC in the Iranian-Australian community – a fear which is founded in the clear evidence that the IRGC operates well beyond Iran’s borders with the express purpose of threatening, intimidating and committing acts of violence against individuals it believes threaten its ideology.
“The IRGC is a terrorist organisation and should be recognised as such. Doing so would not just send the right message, it would better empower agencies in Australia to place a greater focus on the IRGC’s activities and operations in Australia. Listing of the IRGC as a terrorist group is not only the request of hundreds of submissions to this inquiry but it is the subject of a worldwide campaign.”
Labor senators dissented from several of the committee recommendations.
On February 15, 2023, the opposition legal affairs spokesman at the time, Julian Leeser, told parliament: “The Iranian regime is a criminal regime … Iran’s crimes against their own people have destroyed the resemblance of legitimacy. That’s why I support moves to make Iran’s IRGC listed as a proscribed terrorist organisation. The IRGC are feared; they operate at home and abroad. The Australian Signals Directorate has confirmed that Guard-affiliated actors have targeted Australian organisations with ransomware attacks. They’re a known supporters of listed organisations such as Hezbollah and the Assad regime in Syria.”
Leeser said the concern about the Criminal Code could be resolved by legal amendments the Coalition would support – the method now being adopted as Burke has indicated.
On the bigger strategic landscape Iran is Israel’s greatest enemy. Over the past year Benjamin Netanyahu has won a series of military victories over Iran and its proxies – he has largely dismantled Hamas, broken Hezbollah’s hold on southern Lebanon as a platform to attack Israel and, along with Donald Trump’s support, has rendered serious damage to Iran’s nuclear facilities. These actions have made Israel and the world safer.
Yet Labor, led by Wong, has had a consistent message: restraint, ceasefire, no more escalation. Labor didn’t support Israel’s ongoing and sustained military actions on any of these fronts and if Netanyahu had taken Labor’s advice – or that of the UN – the Israeli nation and its people would be far more exposed to Iran today, Israel’s on-the-ground situation would be far more precarious and Iran would be a much stronger regional power instead of being diminished and forced on to the defensive.
This is not to endorse Netanyahu’s current campaign or tactics in Gaza, which are counter-productive, militarily flawed and have done grave damage to Israel’s moral and political standing in the world. But it is to recognise the way Israeli military power has transformed the region’s balance against Iran.
Australia’s foreign policy under Labor is big on diplomacy, international norms and symbols, and conspicuously weak on hard power. But it is hard power that is reshaping the world today, from Europe to the Middle East to East Asia. Labor has trouble responding to a world where geo-strategic rivalry, increased defence budgets, more defence self-reliance and strategic deterrence against China are the enduring priorities.
Nowhere has Australia’s diplomacy been so presentational and ineffective than in the Middle East. And nowhere has its strategic outlook been more restrained and cautious than in relation to Iran. Indeed, even after Trump took decisive military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities, Albanese Labor seemed paralysed, struck dumb, upset at the breach of international norms and, incredibly, neither the PM nor any senior Labor figure was able to appear on the media to respond for an entire day. They were frightened about what to say, immobilised by the use of US military power.
When Labor went public it was weasel words. Wong said: “We cannot allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon” and therefore “we support action to prevent Iran getting a nuclear weapon”. That’s it. By contrast the Coalition said it “stands with the United States of America today”.
Under Labor, Israel has been the constant target of Australia’s diplomacy while Iran, the driving force behind Hamas and Hezbollah, has received far less attention and pressure.
Iran would be pleased to see the fractures in Australia’s social cohesion, the large pro-Palestinian demonstrations and the calls for the elimination of the state of Israel. Former foreign minister Alexander Downer told Sky News this week that Labor’s decision to recognise a Palestinian state was a huge propaganda victory for Hamas and “above all for Hamas’s funders, the Iranians”.
Opposition home affairs spokesman Andrew Hastie said the Albanese government had made the right call. Hastie said that as chair of the intelligence committee under the former Coalition government he was “always keen” to list the IRGC, that extensive discussions were held at the time with senior Coalition ministers but, in the end, it wasn’t listed. “We called for it to be listed up to 10 times since 2023,” Hastie said. He warned that authoritarian powers were now working to undermine the social cohesion of Western democracies.
Former ambassador to Israel and Liberal shadow minister Dave Sharma said that during Labor’s time there had been “cause to act some time ago” in relation to the IRGC and expelling the ambassador who was “fanning the flames of anti-Semitism, which is not proper conduct for a diplomat”.
Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council executive director Colin Rubenstein said: “AIJAC has been calling for the proscription of the IRGC for years. It met Australia’s legal definition of a terrorist organisation long before it began attacking Australian Jewish targets in 2024.”
In its formal response to the Senate committee in 2023 the Albanese government said it had “taken stronger action against Iran on human rights than any previous Australian government”. That is correct. Wong wrote to state governments and universities encouraging them “to put on hold any existing co-operations with Iranian entities”. All reports of foreign interference were assessed and investigated.
While declining to proscribe the IRGC, Labor said it was “focused on taking meaningful steps to put pressure on the IRGC”. The government imposed packages of thematic human rights (Magnitsky-style) sanctions that included 27 individuals and 21 IRGC-linked entities. Labor said it been “active and consistent” in public condemnation of the regime’s egregious human rights violations. This included strong comments from Albanese and Wong. The Foreign Minister had raised with her Iranian counterpart reports of protesters and their families being harassed and intimidated.
Previous home affairs minister Clare O’Neil had encouraged her department to engage with Iranians in Australia on the pressure and intimidation they had faced. O’Neil said the Australian government would not tolerate hostile acts in the form of surveillance, harassment or intimidation against people in Australia.
In response to attacks this week from opposition foreign affairs spokeswoman Michaelia Cash that Labor had “some serious explaining to do”, Wong told the ABC: “The IRGC has been sanctioned by Australia for many years. We took stronger action against the IRGC than she ever took when she was part of the Coalition government for nine years, including as Attorney-General. She did not put a single new sanction on the IRGC. They stood by while Iran was elected to the UN body dealing with discrimination against women. We put some 200 sanctions on Iran and the IRGC. We took action at the UN. We took much more decisive action in relation to the IRGC than the Coalition ever did.”
Labor is justified in saying a violent attack on Australia as documented by ASIO is a new and unaccepted action and requires an “unprecedented” response. It is the first expulsion of an ambassador in the post-war period. It constitutes a decisive break in relations with Iran – but nonetheless the evidence suggests Labor waited for too long. Both at home and in the region, it has lacked resolution in coming to grips with Iran’s behaviour, its aggression and its unacceptable quest to eliminate Israel.
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Iran’s attack on Australian soil brings home to the local community the fanatical nature of its Islamist regime and Australia’s previous inhibitions to act decisively against Iran – in bilateral diplomacy at home or in the deadly regional confrontation between Israel and Iran.