Is Anthony Albanese ready to admit yet that he’s been attacking the wrong country for months? Just over a week after he announced that he would reward Hamas by recognising a ‘Palestinian’ state, and he and his cabinet members launched a series of disgraceful attacks against Israel, as well as banning multiple Israeli government officials from the country, Little Albo seems to have been brutally reminded just who Australia’s enemy in this fight really is.
And it’s not Israel.
Albanese said the Iranian ambassador to Australia had been expelled and Australia had closed its embassy in Tehran. Diplomats posted to Tehran had been moved to third countries. The prime minister said the government will now legislate to list Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organisation.
This is the first time an Australian government has kicked out a foreign ambassador since WWII. Australia has also shuttered its embassy in Tehran. So, what’s spurred the moves?
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced that the Iranian government directed at least two attacks against the Jewish community in Australia.
The attacks were against the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne and the Lewis’ Continental Kitchen in Sydney.
This admission is set to embarrass the Labor governments in both Canberra and Sydney. NSW authorities were previously adamant that the Sydney attack was not targeted, and that there should be “no community concern”. Police hid behind the smokescreen of claiming the attacks were solely the work of local criminal gangs, and nothing to do with the ‘pro-Palestinian’, anti-Israel movement.
We now for certain now that that was a lie. At best a misleading half-truth.
When asked on Tuesday whether ASIO believed Australian organised crime gangs had been enlisted by Iran to carry out the attacks, [Mike Burgess] said that was the case.
“Are there crime gangs in Australia doing this? Not, in my view,” he said.
However, he said there was an “organised crime element” offshore.
“There is an organised crime element offshore in this, but that’s not to say organised crime is doing it. (Iran) is just using cut outs of organised crime gangs to do their bidding,” Mr Burgess said.
“That was offshore, but that had connections to Australia.”
Burgess said that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had used “a complex web of proxies” to hide its involvement in antisemitic attacks on Australian soil. He said he did not believe Iran was responsible for all antisemitic attacks in Australia, but they may be responsible for more than the two announced on Tuesday.
“We have investigated dozens of incidents,” Burgess said. “ASIO now assesses the Iranian government directed at least two and likely more attacks on Jewish interests in Australia […]
“Iran and its proxies literally and figuratively lit the matches and fanned the flames.”
That admission raises further embarrassing questions for Labor. For instance, is Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, set to be listed as a terrorist group, behind the ‘pro-Palestine’ marches? Multiple marches have featured pro-Iranian imagery, from the Hezbollah flag to placards bearing photos of Iranian Islamic leaders. At the recent Sydney Harbour Bridge protest, multiple Labor figures including senior Muslim MP Ed Husic, were pictured standing next to Abed Mourtada, who travelled to Iran just months ago, for the funeral of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Another protester next to them brandished a massive placard of Iranian dictator Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
How deep in this ‘movement’ is Iran, then?
And why has it taken the government so long to act?
