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.

“Overseas we have seen numerous incidents of Iran contracting organised crime to conduct attacks on journalists, dissidents and targets within the Jewish community.

“Many of us have long been saying that an Iranian hand lies behind some of the antisemitic attacks which have proliferated here in Australia since October 7,” she wrote.

For decades the Australian Jewish community has called for Australia to list the IRGC as a terrorist organisation, expel the Iranian ambassador from Australia and withdraw Australia’s ambassador from Iran. The Australian government has finally acted on this, but many will lament that it took so long.

As Shadow Attorney-General Julian Leeser aptly remarked in the immediate aftermath of Hamas’s brutality on October 7 to Sky News, “We need to reconsider our diplomatic relations with Iran.

“If we’re to have a values-based foreign policy, and we’re to be serious about that … Iran doesn’t deserve a seat at the table. They have been for a long time a rogue regime, a criminal regime,” he said. Leeser repeated that call in April last year, posting on social media, “Australia has nothing in common with Iran, we must cut ties with this despotic regime.”

Too often Hamas’s connections to Iran have been ignored and downplayed. Israel claims that Iran knew about the October 7 attack in advance and helped to fund and support it.

When Albanese was asked during the press conference whether he sees Iran’s actions as an attack on Australia or an attack on the Jewish community he rightfully replied, “Any attack on our social cohesion is an attack on Australia.”

This was a foreign attack on Australia. It was also an attack on the Australian Jewish community. To those who have argued that claims of antisemitism in Australia are imagined, overstated, or “weaponised” – this is your wake-up call.

When it was revealed earlier this year that some antisemitic incidents were being conducted by organised criminals, some dismissed antisemitism as “fabricated”. Now we are learning that some of these criminals may have been pawns in Iran’s larger game of chess.

As ASIO boss Mike Burgess stated, “Our painstaking investigation uncovered and unpicked the links between the alleged crimes and the commanders in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the IRGC. The IRGC used a complex web of proxies to hide its involvement.”

Burgess said that Iran was responsible for at least two incidents, but it could be more. We also do not know Iran’s role in funding the anti-Israel movement more generally in Australia on campus and the protests in our cities. A clue could be the picture of Iran’s supreme leader held high on the Sydney Harbour Bridge march behind its lead campaigners.

The Australian Jewish community will be grateful to the police and intelligence agencies who have cracked this case. At the same time there will be concern that Iran has turned its attention to attacking Australia’s Jewish community and undermining our social cohesion. There will be increased trepidation when we drop off our children at Jewish schools and walk into synagogues.

We will need the Commonwealth and state governments, and all Australians to recognise that antisemitism is a real threat and implement measures to protect the Jewish community. If Iran wants to trash our social cohesion, Australians must stand against it.

Sharyn Kolieb is editor-at-large at The AJN.