Australia accused Iran on Tuesday of directing arson attacks on a Jewish business and a synagogue in Australia last year and said it was severing diplomatic ties with the country and expelling its diplomats.
“These were extraordinary and dangerous acts of aggression orchestrated by a foreign nation on Australian soil,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said at a news conference in Canberra, the capital, where he was flanked by Australia’s top intelligence official, its foreign minister and its home affairs minister.
“They were attempts to undermine social cohesion and sow discord in our community,” he said.
A spate of violent attacks on Jewish businesses and institutions, which began late last year, has unnerved many people in Australia, which has the highest concentration of Holocaust survivors outside of Israel. The extraordinary decision to publicly hold Iran responsible for some of the attacks, and to cut diplomatic relations, was not reached quickly or taken lightly, Australian officials said on Tuesday.
Australian security agencies have concluded that Iran was behind the arson attacks on a decades-old kosher restaurant, Lewis’ Continental Kitchen, in Sydney in October and the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne two months later. No one was injured in the attacks, which officials said were meant to tear at Australia’s social fabric.
Mike Burgess, Australia’s head of intelligence, said a monthslong investigation had uncovered links between the two attacks and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which Australia said it would designate as a terrorist organization. Mr. Burgess said organized crime groups outside Australia had been involved in the attacks, but he declined to elaborate.
Agents of the Revolutionary Guards, a powerful branch of Iran’s military, used “a complex web of proxies to hide its involvement” in the attacks, Mr. Burgess said at the news conference.
It was the latest allegation that the group, which the United States considers a terrorist organization, had carried out operations overseas. This year, British officials warned that the Revolutionary Guards were operating in Britain, engaging in digital espionage, cyberattacks and political interference. They are also believed to have waged disinformation operations in an attempt to sway last year’s U.S. presidential election.
Iran’s ambassador to Australia, Ahmad Sadeghi, was informed of the expulsion about half an hour before the announcement was made, Mr. Albanese said. The Iranian Embassy in Canberra did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong said it was the first time since World War II that Australia had ejected an ambassador, but that Iran had “crossed a line.” Mr. Sadeghi and other Iranian diplomats and officials were given seven days to leave the country, she said.
Australia’s embassy in Tehran, which has been open since 1968, was effectively closed earlier on Tuesday, Ms. Wong said. She said diplomats posted there had been safely relocated to third countries, and she urged Australians currently in Iran to leave if they are able to do so.
Ms. Wong said Australia would keep “some diplomatic lines” open, without providing details. She said Australia did not want the conflict in the Middle East to be replicated on its soil, urging the public not to fall prey to attempts to divide it using anger and tension arising from the war in Gaza.
“We all want the killing in the Middle East to stop, and we all want to retain our character as a nation that welcomes people of different race, religion, views, united by respect for each other’s humanity,” she said.
Israel’s embassy in Australia responded quickly to the government’s announcements, calling the terrorist designation for the Revolutionary Guards “a strong and important move.” In a statement posted to social media, the embassy said, “Iran’s regime is not only a threat to Jews or Israel, it endangers the entire free world, including Australia.”
Australia relations with Israel’s leadership have been deteriorating since Canberra’s announcement this month that it planned to recognize Palestine as a state.
The raft of antisemitic episodes in Australia over the past year has included an arson attack on a day care center, as well as vandalism and graffiti that featured swastikas and anti-Jewish slurs. On Tuesday, officials said they believed that Iran was behind more of those attacks than the two specified on Tuesday, but not all of them.
Mr. Burgess, the intelligence chief, said his agency had investigated “dozens” of incidents targeting the Jewish community, including places of worship, businesses and prominent individuals, over the past year.
The attack on the Adass Israel Synagogue, a storied institution in Melbourne, was one of the most alarming incidents. People in masks poured a liquid accelerant inside the building in the early morning hours and set it on fire, causing significant damage.
Australia’s minister of home affairs, Tony Burke, said on Tuesday that even though no one was physically injured in the attacks, the synagogue’s congregation, the broader Jewish community and the country itself were hurt.
“Australia was attacked and Australia was harmed,” he said.
Victoria Kim is the Australia correspondent for The New York Times, based in Sydney, covering Australia, New Zealand and the broader Pacific region.
Damien Cave leads The Times’s new bureau in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, covering shifts in power across Asia and the wider world.
The post Australia Says Iran Was Behind Antisemitic Arson Attacks on Its Soil appeared first on New York Times.
