After Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Tuesday that Iran was found to be behind a pair of antisemitic arson attacks in 2024, court documents published in a report Wednesday showed how one of those attacks was bungled by local criminals and a gangster styling himself as “James Bond.”
Australia’s national security service said it identified Iranian government involvement in firebombing attacks on the kosher Lewis’ Continental Kitchen in Bondi, next to Sydney, in October and the Adass Israel synagogue in Melbourne in December.
It is likely the Iranian regime was also involved in additional attacks, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation said.
In response to the revelations that Iran was behind the attacks, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said his country was expelling Tehran’s ambassador, calling the Iranian actions “dangerous acts of aggression” designed to undermine his country’s social cohesion.
Albanese announced that Canberra had also pulled its diplomats from the Islamic Republic and will list the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terror organization. It marks the first time Australia has expelled an ambassador since World War II.
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According to The Sydney Morning Herald, the Bondi attack was preceded by two failed attempts on the wrong venue. The alleged mastermind, Nomads bikie chapter president Sayed Moosawi, directed the operation using the messaging app Signal using the alias “James Bond.” Moosawi migrated to Australia as a refugee in 2005 and has a long record of violent crime, the report said.
A daycare center is set on fire in Sydney, Australia, with antisemitic graffiti next to it, on January 21, 2025 (Screencapture/X)
He allegedly said he was paid $12,000 to arrange a fire in Bondi, in an operation believed to have originated in Iran, according to the report.
According to Morning Herald, Moosawi allegedly recruited Wayne Ogden and Juon Amuoi to torch a target in September 2024, but the pair fled after being spotted near the Curly Lewis Brewery, a beachfront bar with no Jewish connections.
Moosawi was furious, allegedly telling Ogden in an expletive-filled message that a “f—ing 16 years kid could of got it done.”
Weeks later, two other men, Guy Finnegan and Craig Bantoft, were recruited to attack Lewis’ Continental Kitchen, reportedly offering them $4,000. However, they mistakenly returned to the same brewery on October 17 and set a small fire that was quickly doused by sprinklers.
Furious at the repeated bungles, Moosawi allegedly berated his crew over Signal: “Use [sic] f—ed the whole thing … It’s not even 2% burned f— me dead.”
The Iranian national flag flies over the Iranian embassy in Canberra on August 26, 2025. Australia’s government said on August 26, it is expelling Iran’s ambassador, accusing the country of being behind antisemitic attacks in Melbourne and Sydney. (Photo by Hilary Wardhaugh / AFP)
Police arrested Finnegan within 24 hours, but Ogden allegedly returned days later to finish the job.
At 2:30 a.m. on October 20, he allegedly broke into Lewis’ Continental Kitchen, poured fuel across the premises, and ignited a blaze that caused more than $1 million in damage and forced nearby residents to evacuate.
Bantoft and Finnegan have since pleaded guilty over the brewery fire and are serving prison sentences. Ogden and Amuoi are awaiting trial on October 21, as is Moosawi, who was granted bail this month after posting $2 million surety.
Layers of concealment
Australia’s intelligence agency also said it traced to Iran the funding of criminals who allegedly set fire to the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne in December, even as those charged with the crime were likely unaware Tehran was their puppet master.
Two of the three suspects in that attack have been arrested in the past two months.
The investigation into the crimes required intelligence forces to work backwards through payments made onshore and offshore to “petty and sometimes not so petty criminals,” Albanese said in parliament.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Director-General of ASIO Mike Burgess speak to the media during a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra, August 26, 2025. (AAP Image/Lukas Coch)
More than 220 law enforcement officers have devoted more than 50,000 hours to the investigation, authorities said in July.
Australia’s spy chief Mike Burgess said a series of “cut outs,” an intelligence term for intermediaries, were used to conceal Iran’s involvement in the attacks, and warned that the country may have orchestrated others.
The turning point in the Adass investigation came in May, when Australian Federal Police and the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation seized cellphones and digital devices from suspects arrested in Victoria state over the synagogue attack and highlighted a stolen blue Volkswagen Golf sedan used in unrelated attacks.
CCTV footage of the attack on December 6 released by police showed three hooded figures unloading red jerrycans of fuel from the boot of the car, one of whom was wielding an axe, at the entrance of the synagogue and setting it alight before speeding away.
Footage posted to social media shows a fire blazing in the Adass Israel Synagogue in the Melbourne suburb of Ripponlea, Australia, December 6, 2024. (Screenshot, used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law)
Victoria’s Joint Counter Terrorism Team alleged that 20-year-old Younes Ali Younes stole the car to carry out the attack and recklessly endangered lives by setting fire to the $20 million synagogue when people were inside, a charge sheet showed. No one was wounded in the attack.
Younes appeared in Melbourne’s Magistrates Court Wednesday, charged with the arson attack on the synagogue and theft of a car. He did not enter a plea and did not seek bail. His lawyer declined to comment to Reuters.
Another suspect, 21-year-old Giovanni Laulu, appeared in court last month on the same charges.
Police have referred to the sedan as a “communal crime car” linked to other attacks that were not politically motivated.
Security forces have been criticized within the Australian Jewish community for their months-long failure to identify the suspects in the Adass Israel case, which many saw as a turning point in the battle against antisemitism.
Australian Jews have been frustrated by what they say has been the government’s failure to rein in attacks and violent rhetoric.
Swastikas daubed on a synagogue in Newtown in Sydney, Australia, on January 11, 2025. (Screen grab via ABC News)
Anti-Jewish activity in Australia skyrocketed in the year after Hamas terrorists launched the war against Israel on October 7, 2023. Some 2,062 incidents were recorded between October 2023 and September 2024, compared to 495 incidents a year earlier, according to data from the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ).
In recent months, Jews there have seen synagogues, schools, and homes firebombed, two nurses threatening to kill Jewish patients in their hospital, and the discovery of a trailer filled with explosives said to have been intended to cause a mass-casualty event at a Sydney synagogue.
The country’s recent decision to recognize a Palestinian state at the United Nations General Assembly in September has aggravated a growing sense of alienation among the country’s 120,000-strong Jewish community and sparked a sharp war of words between Albanese’s government and Israeli officials.
After Canberra decided last week to bar far-right Religious Zionism MK Simcha Rothman from visiting the country, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lambasted Albanese, calling him a “weak politician who betrayed Israel.”
In response, Australian Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said Netanyahu was “lashing out,” and that true strength was more than “how many people you can blow up.”
Despite the dramatic exchanges, Netanyahu praised Canberra’s decision to expel the Iranian ambassador as a “first step,” saying he was “pleased” by the move in a post on X.
A protester raises a portrait of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei across the Sydney Harbour Bridge during a pro-Palestinian rally in Sydney on August 3, 2025. (Saeed KHAN / AFP)
Australia is the latest Western government to accuse Iran of carrying out hostile covert activities on its soil.
Security services in Britain and Sweden warned last year that Tehran was using criminal proxies to carry out its violent attacks in those countries, with London saying it had disrupted 20 Iran-linked plots since 2022. A dozen other countries have condemned what they called a surge in assassination, kidnapping, and harassment plots by Iranian intelligence services.