Iran’s evil does not stop at its borders

Iran’s direct involvement in terror overseas has been well known for decades. Nonetheless, Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese seemed genuinely blindsided by its arrival Down Under.

At a press conference in Canberra this week, Albanese told reporters that the evidence left no room for doubt. The firebombing of a synagogue and a kosher deli in Australia last year had been planned by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). Australian intelligence had reached the ‘deeply disturbing conclusion’, he said, that Iran ‘sought to disguise its involvement’ in these ‘extraordinary and dangerous acts of aggression’.

For a notoriously equivocating politician (his being ‘weak’ is one of the few things Israel and Iran seem to agree on), Albanese’s response was, for once, somewhat firm. He has given the Iranian ambassador seven days to leave Australia and designated the IRGC a terrorist organisation.

His words might even have been welcomed by Jewish Australians, a community he has otherwise shown little interest in, despite the wave of anti-Semitic incidents they have faced over the past nightmarish two years. ‘We have witnessed a number of appalling anti-Semitic attacks against Australia’s Jewish communities’, Albanese said. ‘I have made it clear that these sorts of incidents have no place in Australia, and I want the [Australian Security Intelligence Organisation] and the [Australian Federal Police] to investigate them as a priority.’

The first arson attack traced to Iran occurred in the Sydney suburb of Bondi in October last year. Lewis’ Continental Kitchen, a kosher deli, was gutted by a fire that caused more than $1million AUD in damage. The second attack, on the Addass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne in December, left an even deeper psychological scar on Australian Jews. The building was largely destroyed. In both cases, police allege that underworld figures – at the behest of Iran – hired or forced the arsonists to carry out the attacks. Other instances of anti-Semitic vandalism, including attacks on the office of a prominent Australian Jewish MP and on the home of a Jewish leader, are also suspected to bear Tehran’s fingerprints.

These revelations should hardly have shocked Albanese. After all, Iran has long exported its brand of violent Islamism well beyond its borders. This has ramped up especially since 7 October 2023 and the start of the Gaza war.

In May, seven Iranian nationals were arrested across the UK, accused of plotting two separate terror attacks. A July report from the UK parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee described Iran as a ‘wide-ranging, persistent and unpredictable’ threat. Iranian-backed attacks have also been carried out in Spain, France and Argentina. Even 7 October itself had Iran’s fingerprints all over it. The Hamas militants who murdered 1,200 people in southern Israel were flush with Iranian cash and weapons.

It is, of course, hardly positive news that a foreign country is sponsoring anti-Semitic attacks in your own country. Yet you can’t help but think the career politician in Albanese must have breathed a sigh of relief. Flanked by Australia’s top spy Mike Burgess and foreign minister Penny Wong, Albanese was suddenly able to pose as a protector of Australian Jews. Even though he has been anything but in the recent past.

Indeed, Albanese cannot fully wash his hands of the crisis of anti-Semitism in Australia. Ever since 7 October, he has depicted Israel as essentially the sole perpetrator of every misfortune in Gaza. His Labor government has repeatedly demanded ceasefires which would have offered strategic advantages to Hamas. It even condemned Israel for its counter-attacks against Hezbollah – Iran’s most lethal and well-armed proxy. Albanese’s one-sided, unwavering criticism of Israel has cultivated a national hostility to the Jewish State. It is not hard to see how this has allowed anti-Semitism to flourish.

Anthony Albanese is right to stand up to the Iranian terror threat. But Australia’s Jewish community will expect far more from the prime minister before trust is restored. The arson attacks may have been ordered from abroad, but the broader climate of Jew hatred is largely homegrown.

Hugo Timms is an editorial assistant at spiked.