The rank odour of opportunity seems to have presented itself to Australia’s Albanese government. To balance its apparently principled promise to recognise Palestinian statehood come the 80th United Nations General Assembly next month, it seemed only fair that some firm measure be taken against another Islamic outfit to balance the ledger. The Israelis were watching closely, and a sense of concern had started to bubble along the diplomatic channel that Canberra was proving wobbly. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had made his views felt: “History will remember Albanese for what he is: A weak politician who betrayed Israel and abandoned Australia’s Jews.”
On August 26, it all came to the fore. Iran had become the latest, if only briefest, of bogeymen for political consumption in Australia. The Islamic Republic, charged the Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, had “directed at least two” attacks of an “appalling” and “antisemitic” nature. Expecting revelations of gleeful massacres involving whole families including livestock and uprooted orchards, we are told that these outrageous incidents were ones of arson: an attack on Lewis’ Continental Kitchen in Sydney in October last year, and the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne last December. “These were extraordinary and dangerous acts of aggression orchestrated by a foreign nation on Australian soil. They were attempts to undermine social cohesion and sow discord in our community.”
Mike Burgess, the domestic spy chief, confirmed the claim that the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) had identified “at least two and likely more attacks on Jewish interests in Australia.” These were linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and found through “painstaking investigation” (good to see that investigations at the spy agency are painstaking). The IRGC had been fiendish in concealing its role, using “a complex web of proxies to hide its involvement.” With shamanistic self-confidence, Burgess revealed that he had warned of this very thing earlier in the year. For a sense of restrained balance, he stated that Tehran may not necessarily be “responsible for every act of antisemitism in Australia.”
The action undertaken seemed outsized, involving the expulsion of the Iranian ambassador Ahmad Sadeghi along with three other embassy officials. They have been given seven days to exit the country. The IRGC is also slated for proscription as a terrorist organisation.
The head scratching question in all of this is: Why bother? The Iranian Revolutionary Guards have larger fish to skin, fry and broil. Tehran, for all its appetites in seeking power and influence in the Middle East, has tended to keep its targets beyond the region to Israeli embassies and property and, most notably of all, dissidents. To target the Australian Jewish community would seem to be a needless expenditure of effort and resources. Australia’s resident talking head on the wickedness of the mullahs, Kylie Moore-Gilbert, herself having spent time incarcerated in Iran on suspicions of espionage, is hardly illuminating in her explanation. “It’s difficult to say what Iran’s direct motivations are, other than to undermine Australia’s social cohesion.” She opts for the primary colour approach, streaked with syllogism: as the Iranian regime is antisemitic, and as Israel is the main enemy, it follows that all Jews, according to the dotty haters in Tehran, are “an extension of Israel.”
The expulsion’s salience would have been more significant if it had been done in response to activities undertaken against members of the Iranian Australian community, a far more widespread and evident problem. Yet on this point, the Albanese government proved tardy, despite ample evidence of harassment and surveillance orchestrated at Tehran’s behest. In February 2023, the then Minister for Home Affairs Clare O’Neil stated in her Australian National University address that ASIO had “disrupted the activities of individuals who had conducted surveillance in the home of an Iranian-Australian, as well as conducted extensive research of this individual and their family.” The previous month, a spokesperson for Foreign Minister Penny Wong expressed deep concern at “reports of foreign interference, including the harassment and intimidation of Australians online and in-person.” These matters had been raised with Iran “in no uncertain terms.”
Iran had also proved to be a more convenient, if selective target. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, for instance, Indian intelligence operatives have been creating much mischief, snooping, harassing and leaving their warning signs, most notably when it comes to the global Sikh diaspora. Concerned about the pangs of longing for the independent state of Khalistan, the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has not been above resorting to assassination. Melbourne taxi driver Harjinder Singh is one who can attest to threats from the Indian authorities regarding his pro-Khalistan activities, notably to his family back in India.
To add to this, India was found to have engaged in such friendly activities as cultivating access to sensitive defence technology in Australia and securing airport security protocols. In 2020, Burgess announced that his agency had “confronted” the spies in question “and quietly and professionally removed them.” Despite this fuss, there were no diplomatic expulsions. A façade of excruciating politeness was maintained.
Least surprising of all was the hearty approval of the Australian move by Israel. With Netanyahu venomously spouting at the Australian Prime Minister that he was feeble and incapable of protecting Jews in Australia, the expulsion was automatically assumed to be a product of constructive Israeli interference. Israeli government spokesperson David Mencer, after explaining the reasons for Netanyahu’s hectoring, thought it a “positive outcome” that Australia was “taking the threats against Israel and the Jewish people, Jewish Australians living in Australia […] seriously”.
Australia’s Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke dismissed efforts on the part of the Israeli government to claim the lion’s share of credit as nonsense. “We’ve taken this action because Iran has attacked Australians. No other country is involved in terms of that conclusion.”
Short of WikiLeaks finding out the inner strangeness of this, we await further evidence why Iran would ever bother to expend any time on focusing on a country so far from its interests as to be satirically irrelevant. That said, the nature of much intelligence is that it is often short of being particularly intelligent.
Comments