Mossad names IRGC commander behind local attacks
'The international community must unite to counter this threat, including with the use of powerful sanctions.'
Mossad has identified Sardar Ammar, a senior commander in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force, as the mastermind behind the firebombing attacks on Melbourne’s Adass Israel Synagogue and Lewis’ Continental Kitchen in Sydney last year.
According to Mossad, Ammar heads a transnational terror network commanding approximately 11,000 operatives responsible for carrying out covert operations targeting Jewish and Israeli sites around the world. The network has intensified its efforts since the October 7 Hamas attacks.
Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council executive director Colin Rubenstein said the revelations demonstrate the Iranian regime’s dangerous nature.
“This latest revelation is just further evidence of the sinister, evil nature of the Iranian regime,” he said.
“There can be no doubt that the regime is antisemitic to its core, and poses a grave threat to stability not just in the Middle East but across the world. The international community must unite to counter this threat, including with the use of powerful sanctions. These revelations also again underline the importance of the Israeli and US campaign to weaken Iran’s nuclear program and military in June, and how vital it is that the Iranian clerical regime never be allowed to obtain nuclear weapons.”
It follows Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s announcement in late August that ASIO had determined Iran was behind the two Australian firebombings – one at Lewis’ Continental Kitchen on October 20 and another at the Adass Israel Synagogue on December 6.
Following the ASIO findings, the Australian government expelled Iran’s ambassador and announced it would list the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terror organisation. The expulsion marked the first time Australia has removed an ambassador since World War II.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the exposure of Ammar’s attack mechanism “proves the failed management of the mechanism in its efforts and undermines the Iranian attempts to operate covertly, beneath the radar”.
“Under Amar’s command, a significant mechanism was established to promote attacks against Israeli and Jewish targets both in Israel and abroad,” Netanyahu said, adding that the network was responsible for attacks “in Greece, Germany and Australia”.
Mossad said the network carried out vandalism and arson attacks against Jewish businesses and communal institutions, “aiming to intimidate communities and create conditions that could lead to more serious attacks”. The network also planned attacks against senior Jewish communal figures.
To hide Iran’s involvement, Mossad said, the network recruited non-Iranians, used criminal gangs, and insisted on a high degree of compartmentalisation. The attacks were generally seen by intelligence agencies as amateurish, with criminals twice targeting the wrong Sydney venue before eventually torching the kosher restaurant in 2024.
Mossad pointed to additional incidents tied to the network uncovered in cooperation with foreign intelligence agencies. In July 2024, Greece’s anti-terrorism police arrested seven people, including two Iranians, over separate arson attacks against an Israeli-owned hotel and a synagogue in central Athens.
In July this year, German prosecutors said Danish police had arrested a man suspected of gathering information on Jewish locations and individuals in Berlin for Iranian intelligence.