The Islamic Republic of Iran calls for Israel’s destruction, supporting a number of terrorist groups to achieve this objective. Yet the regime’s targets also include Jewish communities across the globe. Recent events in Australia prove as much.
On Tuesday, the Australian government announced it was expelling Iranian Ambassador Ahmad Sadeghi and three other Iranian diplomats. It’s the first time Canberra has expelled a foreign ambassador since World War II.
Decrying “dangerous acts of aggression orchestrated by a foreign nation on Australian soil,” Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told reporters that his country had also removed its diplomats from Tehran. His government will now move to list Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization. Why this action?
Albanese cited recent findings by the Australian Security Intelligence Organization that Iran was behind at least two recent attacks against Australia’s Jewish community.
The first was an arson attack on a kosher deli in Sydney on Oct. 20, 2024. The second was an arson attack on the Adass Israel synagogue on Dec. 6, 2024. Michael Burgess, the head of ASIO, told the press that a “painstaking” investigation concluded that the Iranian regime had facilitated these and “likely” more assaults on Australia’s Jewish community.
“The actions of my government send a clear message, a message to all Australians that we stand against antisemitism, and we stand against violence,” Albanese said. “And a message to nations like Iran who seek to interfere in our country, that your aggression will not be tolerated.”
Australia’s decision should be applauded. Other countries may have to follow suit.
The Islamic Republic poses a global threat. Tehran has a long history of supporting — even wholesale creating — terrorist groups whose preeminent target is Israel. Yet the regime has an equally long history of targeting Jews throughout the world, irrespective of their ties to the Jewish state. And its reach is long.
Perhaps most infamously, on July 18, 1994, Iranian proxies blew up the Argentine Mutual Israelite Association, a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires. That attack killed 85 people and injured hundreds more. It remains the deadliest terrorist attack in Argentina’s history. It is also a tragic example of how Iran does business.
Iranian-backed operatives have also “hired European criminals to carry out surveillance of Jews and Jewish businesses in Paris, Munich, and Berlin,” according to an October 2024 report by the International Center for Counter-Terrorism. As terrorism analysts Matthew Levitt and Sarah Boches have pointed out, Iran has “increasingly leveraged criminal networks as proxies to carry out attacks abroad to provide distance between Tehran and the operations abroad.”
This is in keeping with the regime’s preference for plausible deniability and is part of a long-standing trend. In 2011, for example, Iranian operatives acting under orders from former IRGC Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani attempted to work with Mexican drug cartel members to blow up Washington, D.C.’s Cafe Milano restaurant. They wanted to assassinate the then-Saudi Ambassador to Washington. But when warned that many civilians would likely also be killed in the explosion, the IRGC operations officer responded, “F*** ’em.” Unfortunately for the IRGC man, his cartel contact was an undercover Drug Enforcement Agency informant.
WHERE THE REMAINING LEGAL CASES AGAINST TRUMP STAND
Regardless, thwarting future attacks will require governments to be proactive. It will also entail a keen understanding of the threat.
The Islamic Republic isn’t merely anti-Israel. It is intrinsically antisemitic, seeking to murder Jews en masse, the world over.
Sean Durns is a Senior Research Analyst for the 65,000-member, Boston-based Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis, or CAMERA.