This was a foreign attack on Australia

When Prime Minister Anthony Albanese revealed that Iran was behind at least two antisemitic incidents in Australia in 2024 – the arson attack on Adass Israel synagogue in December in Melbourne and Lewis’ Continental Kitchen in October in Sydney – my reaction was one of horror, but not shock.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has a history of terror abroad often using proxies including Hezbollah. Last year, Argentina’s highest criminal court blamed Iran for the 1994 bombing attack against the Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires – the Argentinian Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) – that killed 85 people and wounded 300. The judges ruled that the bombing was carried out by Hezbollah in response to a “political and strategic design” by Iran. Hezbollah is also believed to be responsible for the bus bombing in 2012 in Bulgaria that killed five Israeli tourists and their Bulgarian driver, while Iran has been blamed directly for attempted bombings of Israeli embassies in Thailand and India in 2012.

The IRGC is also accused of trying to assassinate former US national security advisor John Bolton and the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States on American soil.

The Islamic Republic has long engaged in hostage diplomacy and was the reason Australian academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert was imprisoned in Iran on false charges of espionage, before she was released in a prisoner swap deal for three Iranian agents who were involved in the attempted attack on the Israeli embassy in Bangkok.

The IRGC continues to target dissidents abroad and those who speak out against the regime. As Moore-Gilbert wrote on social media, “For years now the Iranian-Australian community and other victims of the IRGC, including myself, have been literally screaming at rallies, to our local MPs, in parliamentary consultations and in reports to the national security hotline that Iranian agents are operating brazenly and with few consequences here on Australian soil.