Iran threat
The failure of the attack shows that despite the belligerence of Tehran's rhetoric.
For the first time, Iran has directly attacked Israel. Instead of using proxies to do its dirty work, the Islamic Republic over the weekend launched hundreds of drones, ballistic and cruise missiles at the Jewish state.
Fortunately, almost all were intercepted, many before reaching Israeli airspace. Sadly, a seven-year-old Bedouin girl was critically injured from shrapnel.
The failure of the attack shows that despite the belligerence of Tehran’s rhetoric, it not only currently lacks the means to directly assault Israel but may have also overplayed its hand in its attempt to do so. The Western world, including Australia, swung firmly behind Israel in a near universal condemnation of Iran’s actions.
The failure also proved that Israel’s security relationships with its allies and neighbours are ironclad, no matter how much the Arab states – those with whom Israel has relations and those with whom it does not – speak disapprovingly about the war in Gaza. Jordan and even Saudi Arabia were instrumental in the defence operation.
It flies in the face of Penny Wong’s claim last week that “the normalisation agenda … cannot proceed without progress on Palestinian statehood”.
Clearly the Arab states and Saudi Arabia understand something that Wong does not; Iran’s destabilising agenda, not the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is the main game that informs the strategic decisions made by governments in the region.
The other thing our Foreign Minister needs to understand was laid out very clearly by Liberal backbencher Julian Leeser this week: “Australia has nothing in common with Iran, we must cut ties with this despotic regime.” We will add: it is also time, as a Senate Committee has already recommended, to proscribe Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organisation.
There is nothing positive to gain from our diplomatic relationship with Tehran; all it does is lend legitimacy and cover to a tyrannical regime that tortures and kills its own citizens, persecutes women and spreads terror around the world.
Penny Wong may have made a catastrophic blunder last week in laying out the case for prematurely recognising a Palestinian state, but Iran’s unprecedented attack on Israel over the weekend has presented the her with an opportunity to learn a lesson. Let us pray she does not squander it.
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