Australia was left with “no choice” but to take action over revelations the Iranian regime had directed two anti-Semitic attacks in Sydney and Melbourne.
The federal government has expelled Iranian ambassador Ahmad Sadeghi, making him the first high-ranking diplomat to be booted from Australia since World War II.
Australia’s spy agency said it had “credible evidence” the Iranian Revolutionary Guard directed at least two attacks on Jewish premises through connections with domestic criminal elements.
Iran’s ambassador to Australia was spotted leaving the embassy in Canberra on Wednesday morning as the government begins drafting laws to list the Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organisation.
While the government has been hesitant to divulge details as other investigations continue, Australian National University Arab and Islamic Studies scholar Ian Parmeter believes the move must be grounded in “utterly compelling” evidence.
“If you’ve got evidence of that happening at the behest of a foreign country, you have to take action,” the former ambassador to Lebanon told AAP.
“I don’t think we really had any choice.”
Iran has denied the allegations, but Mr Parmeter believes such moves were “part of their playbook”.
In recent months, Iran has lost power in the Middle East.
The US bombed Iranian nuclear sites in June as part of Israel’s 12-day war with Tehran, and the fall of Syria’s Assad regime in December has taken down one of Iran’s closest allies.
“Iran feels very isolated,” Mr Parmeter said.
“The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps were, in a sense, thrashing about and trying to make themselves relevant again.”
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the anti-Semitic incidents were “an attack on our social fabric and who we are”.
Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei denied the allegations and linked them to challenges Australia faced with Israel after the government announced it was preparing to recognise a Palestinian state.
A government spokesperson was quoted by state media as saying Iran would take an “appropriate decision” in response to Australia’s action.
Australians in Iran have been urged to leave immediately as the government no longer has an embassy there.
“The Iranian regime is an unpredictable regime, a regime which we have seen is capable of aggression and violence,” Foreign Minister Penny Wong told ABC Radio.
The government’s travel advice has also been updated to warn of a “high risk” of arbitrary detention or arrest.
The Iran-Australia relationship has never been particularly close but is now “as low as it’s been”, Mr Parmeter said.
Australia has previously expelled lower-level diplomats, booting Russian spies in 2018 over a nerve-agent attack and ousting an Israeli representative in 2010 after forged Australian passports were used in the assassination of a Hamas operative.
But these expulsions were carried out “fairly quietly” compared to Tuesday’s Iranian announcement.
Coalition home affairs spokesman Andrew Hastie welcomed the move, saying “any foreign power who conducts violent operations through proxies on our shores is not welcome here”.
The Adass Israel Synagogue was one of the sites firebombed by criminal proxies in December 2024, badly damaging the building and injuring a worshipper.
Synagogue board member Benjamin Klein said he received a call from a senior official in Mr Albanese’s office telling him the government would announce “dangerous acts of aggression” were directed by Iran.
“It is quite shocking and traumatic to think that a peaceful, loving shule (synagogue) in Melbourne is targeted and attacked by terrorists from overseas,” Mr Klein told AAP.
The other site targeted was the Lewis’ Continental Kitchen in Sydney, a kosher deli and a mainstay of Bondi in the city’s eastern suburbs, which was firebombed in October.
Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-CEO Alex Ryvchin said the owner of the popular shop, Judith Lewis, was still processing revelations that the Revolutionary Guard had been linked to the attack.
“The fact that a business is targeted makes every Jewish Australian fearful that they could be next,” he said.
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