In briefForeign Minister Penny Wong says Australia has been asked for military support with the war in the Middle East.Repatriation flights are continuing to evacuate Australians away from the conflict.<\/p>\n
Australia is considering offering military aid to Middle Eastern countries hit by Iranian strikes, but personnel won’t be used to contribute to any war effort.<\/p>\n
As more stranded Australians return home from the Middle East, Foreign Minister Penny Wong confirmed the government was weighing up providing help to nations affected by Iranian retaliatory action.<\/p>\n
“Many countries which are non-participants have been attacked by Iran through this,” she told ABC’s Insiders program on Sunday.<\/p>\n
“You would anticipate, as a consequence, that we have been asked for assistance, and we will work through that carefully.<\/p>\n
“We are not participating in offensive actions against Iran, and we’ve made clear we would not participate in any ground troop deployment into Iran.”<\/p>\n
READ MORE<\/p>\n
The United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran just over a week earlier, killing supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei<\/a>.<\/p>\n Iran’s retaliatory strikes have hit the UAE, Qatar and Bahrain, among other countries.<\/p>\n Wong said Australian military aid could help provide protection against Iranian drone and missile attacks.<\/p>\n “We have been asked, and we will consider it in accordance with (foreign policy) principles,” she said.<\/p>\n “If a decision is made, I’m sure that we will be transparent with the Australian people.<\/p>\n “This is not Iraq, and we are not the Howard government. We are not asking Australians to accept men and women being deployed into a ground war.”<\/p>\n More Australians evacuated by plane, bus<\/p>\n Overnight, more Australians departed from flights from Dubai despite the airspace being briefly closed due to renewed missile strikes, but the airport reopened soon after.<\/p>\n A flight from Dubai to Melbourne with 151 Australians on board is due to arrive on Sunday afternoon, while another flight will land in Sydney later in the evening.<\/p>\n A further two flights are expected to leave Dubai, pending the United Arab Emirates’ airspace remaining open.<\/p>\n More than 1500 Australians have arrived home on flights from the UAE since international services resumed.<\/p>\n READ MORE<\/p>\n Australians have also departed by bus out of the Qatari capital Doha, the base for Virgin Australia’s partner Qatar Airways, to Saudi Arabia’s capital Riyadh.<\/p>\n Three buses carrying 92 Australian citizens, permanent residents and their families have departed.<\/p>\n Assistant Foreign Minister Matt Thistlethwaite said commercial flights were still the best way for Australians to leave the Middle East.<\/p>\n But he admitted the cost of some flights might be a factor in people not being able to return, with some planes departing with large numbers of empty seats.<\/p>\n “We’ve seen that some of those flights haven’t been full, we’ve seen the cost of tickets,” he told Sky News.<\/p>\n Some 115,000 Australians were in the Middle East when the US and Israel launched strikes on Iran.<\/p>\n READ MORE<\/p>\n Australian Travel Industry Association chief executive Dean Long said flights leaving with empty seats should not be a concern.<\/p>\n “The good news is there’s not a huge number of people that we should consider stuck in the transit hub,” he told AAP.<\/p>\n “The people that are primarily in the Middle East now are choosing to be in the Middle East because that’s where they live.”<\/p>\n Meanwhile, federal government ministers have downplayed the presence of three Australian defence personnel on a US nuclear submarine when it struck an Iranian ship near Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n Thistlethwaite said it was a normal rotation for the defence crews as part of the AUKUS security pact but would not say how senior the personnel were.<\/p>\n Opposition frontbencher Claire Chandler said the coalition was supportive of the role Australian defence crews were playing.<\/p>\n “It’s fair to expect that our Australian Navy personnel would be working with US counterparts, particularly within the context of AUKUS,” she said.<\/p>\n \u2014 With additional reporting from the Australian Associated Press.<\/p>\n For the latest from SBS News, download our app<\/a> and subscribe to our newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In briefForeign Minister Penny Wong says Australia has been asked for military support with the war in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":525853,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-525852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=525852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525852\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/525853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=525852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=525852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=525852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}