Australia’s spy boss says Iran planned multiple antisemitic attacks <\/a><\/p>\nIran orchestrated at least two antisemitic attacks in Australia, according to Australia\u2019s national security service ASIO. Here’s what we know.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The timing of these revelations, after a tense diplomatic spat between Israel and Australia and growing public anger about Israel’s campaign in Gaza, has raised legitimate questions.<\/p>\n
Why would Iran burn down a synagogue in Melbourne and a Jewish deli in Sydney?<\/p>\n
Attacking Jews in places like Australia reinforces the narrative of Israel’s right-wing, whose leaders argue that Jews are not safe outside Israel.<\/p>\n
Such attacks have also been used to besmirch legitimate protest movements to end the war in Gaza and support Palestinian self-determination.<\/p>\n
They have also helped take Australia down the contentious path of potentially penalising or limiting criticism of Israel.<\/p>\n
The answer is that certain elements within Iran see these attacks as part of an overall strategy to threaten Israel and its supporters and inflate Iran’s power beyond its limited military and diplomatic range.<\/p>\n
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The Adass Israel Synagogue in Ripponlea was destroyed in the December 2024 attack. (Supplied: Sally Westwood)<\/p>\n
Australia, with a small but prominent Jewish community and diverse population, was unlikely to escape the same kind of operations seen in other Western countries.<\/p>\n
“This is the kind of activity that the Islamic Republic does,” said Thomas Juneau, a professor of public and international affairs at the University of Ottawa and associate fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House).<\/p>\n
“It’s a power projection exercise. It’s a way for the Islamic Republic to build up its narrative as, quote, unquote, a resistance government against Israel against the US.”<\/p>\n
Iran, hampered by decades of sanctions that have limited its military and economic development, has long looked at “asymmetric” or irregular ways to threaten dissidents in the Iranian diaspora as well as its enemies.<\/p>\n
It has led to dozens of these allegations being levelled in Europe, Canada and the United States.<\/p>\n
Iranian Australians have been alleging intimidation and harassment from the Iranian government for years, asking the Australian government to designate the IRGC as a terrorist organisation to help protect them.<\/p>\n
Canada made the designation last year after considerable debate.<\/p>\n
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Australia will designate the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps as a terrorist organisation. (IRGC\/WANA via Reuters)<\/p>\n
Designating an entity as a terrorist organisation allows people dealing with it to be prosecuted in Australia under anti-terror legislation.<\/p>\n
The effectiveness of this step depends on how much police and security agencies are able to enforce those laws.<\/p>\n
“To me, listing the IRGC (by Canada) was by and large \u2026 a performative act with very little capacity to follow through on it. So, my caution to Australia at this point would be that if the government wants to list the IRGC on its own\u2026 (it) has to make sure that the government will be able to follow through on that action, and that there will actually be concrete measures implemented,” Professor Juneau said.<\/p>\n
“It’s always important to remember, especially by mid-sized countries like Australia or Canada, or the United Kingdom, [that] on their own, [they] have little to no impact.<\/p>\n
“Where they can have an impact is when they accumulate, when there is a critical mass of sanctions by democracies as a whole in the West against a country like Iran.”<\/p>\n
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Part of Iran’s motivation for such activities has always been to discourage direct attacks on Iranian soil, driven by a justifiable fear of Western attempts to remove and weaken the clerical regime.<\/p>\n
But after Israel smashed Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Assad dictatorship fell in Syria, and Israel and the US bombed Iran in June, the “forward defence” strategy of arming and supporting non-state armed groups around the Middle East as an insurance policy against attack was left in tatters.<\/p>\n
The strikes decapitated Iran’s military and appeared to spark panic in the IRGC and clerical leadership.<\/p>\n
The US and Israel are also threatening to resume the bombing if Iran doesn’t agree to a new nuclear control deal.<\/p>\n
Iran has found itself further weakened, with few friends and fewer options.<\/p>\n
Sponsoring destabilising activities abroad didn’t help Iran avoid being attacked.<\/p>\n
Instead, it has driven increased sanctions and economic pressure, the burden of which falls on the Iranian people.<\/p>\n
However, given the lack of military and political options available to Iran under its current government, and the unwillingness to consider significant domestic reform, these types of activities may become an even bigger focus for the IRGC.<\/p>\n
The long-term effects of that won’t be good for Western countries or Iranians.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In late 2023, a series of fires broke out at the premises of seemingly unrelated companies in southern…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":98115,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[71900,13449,9903,64,63,6898,5317,5575,71902,32723,6897,44,6899,71901],"class_list":["post-98114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-adas-israel-attack","tag-analysis","tag-antisemitism","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-gaza","tag-hezbollah","tag-iran","tag-irgc","tag-islamic-state","tag-israel","tag-news","tag-palestine","tag-sydney-deli-attack"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98114","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=98114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98114\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}