Monday 09 March 2026Mathew KnottThe Sydney Morning Herald<\/p>\n
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Foreign Minister Penny Wong says Australia could help Middle Eastern nations \u00a0defend themselves against attacks by Iran while declining to back US \u00a0President Donald Trump’s insistence that he play a role in deciding the next \u00a0Iranian leader.
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\u00a0Wong declared it was up to the Iranian people to determine who led their \u00a0nation as she ruled out any role for Australian troops in an offensive action \u00a0in the region.
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\u00a0But in a new development, she flagged Australia could play a defensive role \u00a0in helping protect nations in the Gulf from Iranian missile and drone \u00a0strikes.
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\u00a0”We’ve had many countries which are non-participants [that] have been \u00a0attacked by Iran. You would anticipate as a consequence that we have been \u00a0asked for assistance and we will work through that,” Wong told the ABC’s \u00a0Insiders yesterday.
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\u00a0”We will work through that in accordance with the position I have outlined, \u00a0which is we are not participating in offensive action against Iran. And we’ve \u00a0made clear we would not participate in any ground troop deployment into Iran.
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\u00a0”We have been asked, and we will consider, in accordance with those \u00a0principles.” Wong did not go into detail about exactly what Australia’s \u00a0support could involve, saying the government would be transparent with the \u00a0public about any decision to provide military assistance.
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\u00a0Opposition defence spokesman James Paterson said the opposition had sought a \u00a0briefing about any potential deployment of Australian personnel to the Middle \u00a0East in defensive combat roles.
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\u00a0”Australia has a proud record of standing with our allies and friends in \u00a0times of crisis, and the Coalition will carefully consider any deployment \u00a0proposals in the national interest once briefed,” he said.
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\u00a0Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian apologised on Saturday for attacks on \u00a0regional countries even as its missiles and drones continued flying towards \u00a0Gulf Arab states, indicating Tehran’s political leadership may not be \u00a0exercising full command over Iran’s armed forces.
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\u00a0While avoiding direct criticism of Trump, Wong did not back his view that he \u00a0should play a role in choosing who leads Iran. Trump has said in interviews \u00a0in recent days that ”I have to be involved in the appointment” of Iran’s \u00a0next leader.
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\u00a0Wong said ”the future for Iran and its governance, ultimately, is a decision \u00a0for the Iranian people, and that’s not just a values judgment. It’s also a \u00a0pragmatic judgment.” ”We have seen regime change being sought by external \u00a0parties historically, and I think we all know that for there to be a \u00a0sustainable change of regime, it has to be something that the people of that \u00a0nation back and seek,” she said.
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\u00a0Wong repeated her view that Australia was ”not in a position to determine \u00a0the legal basis” for the US and Israeli strikes on Iran.
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\u00a0”What we can do is make a judgment about what is in our national interests, \u00a0and what we support in order to keep Australians safe,” she said. ”What \u00a0we’ve said is we support action to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear \u00a0weapon and we support action to prevent Iran from continuing to threaten \u00a0international peace and security.” Wong rejected the idea that Australia was \u00a0again backing the US in a misguided military adventure in the Middle East, as \u00a0it did in the Iraq war in the early 2000s.
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\u00a0She said the fact Australian troops were on a US submarine that destroyed an \u00a0Iranian war ship last week did not mean the country was actively involved in \u00a0the war, saying it was not new for military personnel to be involved in such \u00a0deployments.
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\u00a0”When they are deployed in that way, we always have arrangements to ensure \u00a0that any personnel comply with Australian law, Australian policy and \u00a0Australian directives,” she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Monday 09 March 2026Mathew KnottThe Sydney Morning Herald \u200d\u00a0 Foreign Minister Penny Wong says Australia could help Middle…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":529758,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-529757","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\/529757","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=529757"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529757\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/529758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=529757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=529757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=529757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}