Julie Bishop’s asylum-seeker pact made visit a winner

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has brilliantly pursued a narrow, important, very specifically Australian agenda in Iran. It is all about returning failed asylum-seekers.

The “informal arrangement” to share some intelligence information is being wildly overblown, though not by Bishop herself.

It may yield some useful co-operation but the heart of the Bishop visit, its purpose and its substance, is all about returning failed asylum-seekers to Iran.

There are more than 9000 Iranians within the Australian asylum-seeking system.

Of these, 7634 are living in the community in Australia on a bridging E Visa. These are people waiting for a determination of their immigration status.

There are a further 759 Iranians in onshore community detention and another 418 Iranians in onshore “held” detention.

Beyond this, there are 310 Iranians on Manus Island and 202 Iranians on Nauru.

The Iranians are a special problem because if they are refused refugee status, the Iranian government will not accept them back unless they go willingly, even though Iran is obliged to accept its citizens under normal international practice.

That Bishop has thoroughly engaged the Iranians on this issue, and got them to agree to send officials to Australia to discuss it further, is the true achievement of her visit to Iran, not the informal agreement to share some information, although that could be modestly useful in time.

If Iranians keep attempting to come illegally to Australia, there is the potential that they could ultimately overwhelm our system, because at the moment, even if they are judged not to be refugees, Canberra can’t send them home against their will, as it can with failed asylum-seekers from most other countries.

Bishop’s trip follows in the footsteps of former immigration minister, Philip Ruddock, who made similar visits to Iran a decade ago for a similar purpose.

Her visit has almost nothing to do with the proposed nuclear agreement between the US and Iran.

Bishop’s visit to Iran was arranged last September, long before this agreement was in sight.

Many senior figures in Australia’s national security establishment believe the nuclear agreement will not come to fruition or not succeed in restraining Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions. Bishop has been studiously neutral and restrained in her comments on this proposed nuclear deal.

Her visit to Iran is emphatically not a vote of confidence in the nuclear deal.

As Bishop has pointed out in neglected passages in her interviews, Australia has not eased its comprehensive sanctions against Iran, whereas both the US and Europe have already partly eased their sanctions.

Canberra still proscribes as outlawed terrorist bodies a number of organisations supported, if not controlled, by Iran, such as Hezbollah’s military wing.

Iran remains a major state sponsor of global terrorism and there is nothing in Bishop’s visit to suggest that Canberra has lost sight of this fact.

However, there are two areas where Bishop’s informal arrangement to share some intelligence information between Iran and Australia may be useful.

Australian troops are in Iraq to help the Iraqi state fight the Islamic State or Daesh forces. Iran, through the Shia militias it controls in Iraq and through the deployments of its own personnel, is also fighting the same enemy.

Therefore, Bishop is acting with sensible pragmatism to try to ensure there is no accidental confrontation between Australian troops and forces loyal to Iran within Iraq.

However, one of the larger geo-strategic purposes of Australia’s presence in Iraq is to offer the Baghdad government an alternative to Iranian influence.

The US and Australia on the one hand, and Iran on the other, are in geo-strategic competition with Iran for influence in Iraq, not in alliance with Iran.

Nonetheless, Australia has some clear common interests with Iran.

Both Canberra and Tehran share an interest in not having Australians join Islamic State in Iraq or Syria. If Iran stumbles upon information about Australians doing just that and shares it with Canberra, that could be useful.

Of course it is possible that Iran could provide Australia with false information, putting on to such lists the names of people it simply doesn’t like, or who have opposed it politically.

But Australia has a substantial intelligence apparatus, including the Office of National Assessments, which is designed to sort the wheat from the chaff in intelligence information it receives.

Canberra will also seek information from Iran on potential terrorists or people with criminal records who may seek to come to Australia illegally.

However, Canberra will be careful about sharing any information about refugee status applicants with the Iranian government.

Some information must inevitably be shared about people whose refugee application fails and who Canberra wants to send back to Iran.

But there is no danger of Canberra irresponsibly yielding sensitive intelligence information to Iran.

A good deal of this government-to-government information exchange occurs already.

Man Haron Monis, who was responsible for the deaths in the Lindt coffee shop siege in Sydney, was wanted on criminal charges in Iran.

The Iranian government told Canberra of this in detail.

Recently the Iranians have been saying to Canberra: we told you so, over the Man Haron Monis case.

Receiving information from Iran will always be a tricky business. Andrew Wilkie is wrong to suggest therefore that it can have no value, or that Australian agencies are incapable of assessing such information intelligently.