The man, who went by “James Bond” on a messaging app, boasted to an associate last September that he had “something good lined up.”
It was an offer of easy money from the man, a 32-year-old Australian who appeared to enjoy flashy accessories like a pink Gucci cap and a diamond-ringed Rolex. Even a 16-year-old could do the job, he would later say. Torch a business near Bondi Beach in Sydney and pocket 4,000 Australian dollars, about $2,500.
A few days later, in October, a family-owned kosher eatery that had stood as a neighborhood stalwart for more than half a century went up in flames in the middle of the night.
The arson was the beginning of months of antisemitic attacks in Australia’s two biggest cities that left the nation’s small Jewish population on edge. The full picture of what was behind the attacks on Jewish businesses and institutions had largely remained unclear.
But on Tuesday, Australia’s top officials made a stunning announcement. The attack on the restaurant, they said, was actually carried out at the behest of a faraway power: Iran’s military.
Calling the operation an extraordinary attempt at undermining Australia’s social cohesion by targeting Jewish institutions, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese cut off diplomatic ties with Iran and expelled its ambassador and three other diplomats.
Australia’s intelligence chief was circumspect in giving details about the painstaking, monthslong investigation that linked two of the antisemitic attacks to Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
The intelligence official, Mike Burgess, said a “layer cake” of intermediaries stretched from Iran to the kosher restaurant 8,000 miles away, in a deliberate attempt to obfuscate its involvement. Officials also said they had linked the Revolutionary Guards to an arson attack on a Melbourne synagogue in December, and believed Iran was most likely behind other episodes targeting Jews in the country. Iran has denied the accusations.
But court documents in the case of the restaurant outlined more of a bumbling plot by a ragtag crew than a precise plan befitting the spy moniker used by the man who ran the operation on the ground.
Wrong Target
Tensions flared in Australia soon after Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas-led attacks in Israel killed roughly 1,200 people, according to Israeli officials, and set off the war in Gaza.
Two days later, as Israel’s military was counterattacking in the Gaza Strip, hundreds of protesters carrying Palestinian flags gathered at the Sydney Opera House in solidarity with Gaza. The demonstration led to accusations that the crowd had yelled anti-Jewish slurs, stirring up months of controversy, until local officials later concluded based on forensic video analysis that they were unfounded. As Israel escalated its war in Gaza, Jewish organizations said they documented a steep rise in antisemitic attacks in Australia.
About a year after the war began, Sayed Moosawi was planning an attack on a Jewish business in Sydney, court documents say. A cellphone store manager and a member of an outlawed biker gang, he communicated with associates via the Signal app, using the moniker James Bond, according to the charging documents in his criminal case.
Mr. Moosawi claimed he was being paid 12,000 Australian dollars, about $8,000, to burn down a kosher restaurant, according to the records, which do not specify the source of the funds. The authorities have not laid out evidence connecting Mr. Moosawi to Iran, but they said it was not a conclusion they reached lightly.
Four other men — Wayne Ogden, Juon Amuoi, Craig Bantoft and Guy Finnegan — were charged in connection with the attack.
Mr. Ogden and Mr. Amuoi, who the documents say were acting at Mr. Moosawi’s direction, went to Bondi Beach clad in balaclavas and hoods, carrying a sledgehammer, but abruptly left the area “spooked” after a passerby called the authorities.
Two days later, Mr. Bantoft and Mr. Finnegan went to a brewery in Bondi and set a fire, which a sprinkler system quickly put out.
Mr. Moosawi was furious about the minimal amount of damage, according to text messages included in the court records. But the next morning, the men realized that they might have had targeted the wrong establishment — Curly Lewis Brewing Co., rather than Lewis’ Continental Kitchen on Curlewis Street.
“I’m starting to think he has sent us to the wrong place LoL,” Mr. Finnegan wrote in a text message, according to court records.
The next day, prosecutors say, Mr. Ogden drove a stolen white BMW through the cover of night to Lewis’ Continental Kitchen.
Sometime between 3 and 4 a.m., using a wrench, he pried open the front door behind a banner that advertised catering services for Jewish holidays and Shabbat, according to the records. He pulled a red jerrycan from a backpack and flung gasoline throughout the kitchen — and then set it aflame. He sped across town, parked the car on a quiet industrial street 30 miles away and set it on fire.
‘Fanned the Flames’
However haphazard the endeavor may have been, the damage was severe — both to the longstanding business, which sustained about a million Australian dollars’ worth of damage, and to the country’s small but tight-knit Jewish population, which was put on edge.
“They put lives at risk, they terrified the community and they tore at our social fabric,” Mr. Burgess, the intelligence chief, said this week. “Iran and its proxies literally and figuratively lit the matches and fanned the flames.”
Mr. Moosawi was arrested in January on an unrelated case as investigators were piecing together what led to the violence. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges relating to the arson and has been granted bail. The other four were also arrested. Mr. Bantoft and Mr. Finnegan pleaded guilty to setting fire to the Curly Lewis Brewery, while Mr. Ogden and Mr. Amuoi have pleaded not guilty to charges stemming from the attack on Lewis’ Continental Kitchen, according to local news reports.
On Tuesday, Mr. Burgess said that the authorities were continuing to investigate additional attacks that may be linked to Iran.
Mr. Albanese, the prime minister, stressed the gravity of what he said Iran had orchestrated in Australia.
“This is another level,” he told Australia’s public broadcaster. “This is foreign action and foreign violence being committed against Australians, funded and using criminal elements here.”
Victoria Kim is the Australia correspondent for The New York Times, based in Sydney, covering Australia, New Zealand and the broader Pacific region.
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