Tuesday’s revelations by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation that Iran had orchestrated antisemitic attacks in Australia demonstrated once again the extent of the Islamic Republic’s global proxy and terrorism network.
The regime’s operations in Australia show how it has been waging a war on the West, Diaspora Jewry, and Israel by maintaining and using a chain of criminal proxy groups like Hezbollah, Hamas, and Ansar Allah (the Houthis).
Two antisemitic attacks in Australia – the December 6 Adass Israel Synagogue arson attack in Melbourne and the October 20 Lewis’ Continental Kitchen arson attack in Sydney – were directed by Iran, according to ASIO. They were produced by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps through local criminal organizations to obscure its involvement.
Albanese said that the attacks were “attempts to undermine social cohesion and sow discord in our community.”
They followed the same tedious trend of revelations about Iranian espionage, sabotage, and assassinations in Western countries.
Growing condemnations against the Islamic Republic
On July 31, the US, UK, Albania, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czechia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, and Sweden issued a joint statement condemning growing attempts by Iranian intelligence services to kill, kidnap, and harass journalists, dissidents, Jewish citizens, and current and former officials.
The US Justice Department alleged in November that IRGC asset Farhad Shakeri had used the criminal associations he developed in prison to plan the murder of US President Donald Trump and Iranian-American human rights activist Masih Alinejad.
Shakeri was also tasked by the IRGC with the surveillance and murder of two Jewish businesspeople and was asked to plan a mass shooting attack on Israeli tourists in Sri Lanka.
Brooklyn resident Carlisle Rivera and Staten Island resident Jonathon Loadholt were contracted by Shakeri to stalk and murder Alinejad.
Iran has repeatedly targeted Alinejad, including an alleged 2022 attempt in which an Eastern European crime syndicate was contracted to murder her.
The US Justice Department said in March that Georgian citizen Polad Omarov and Iranian citizen Rafat Amirov were paid $500,000 for the assassination and that they subcontracted fellow criminal organization member Khalid Mehdiyev to commit the deed. Mehdiyev was arrested before the attack due to a traffic violation.
Last May, the Swedish Security Service alleged that the Islamic Republic had been using criminal networks in the country to target its enemies. This included dissidents from the Iranian diaspora, Israelis, and Jews.
“Iran has earlier carried out acts of violence in other European countries to silence criticism and what it regards as threats to its regime,” it said in a statement.
“In order to carry out these security-threatening activities, the Iranian regime has sometimes made use of criminal networks,” it added.
One such incident in Europe may have been the attempted assassination of Spanish Vox party founder Alejo Vidal-Quadras Roca in November 2023, Reuters reported.
Eight people were charged in July for trying to kill Vidal-Quadras. Unknown individuals committed the assault on behalf of a criminal organization seeking revenge for the politician’s support of Iranian opposition groups.
Further, the UK Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament warned in July that Iran had made 15 attempts to kill or abduct Jewish citizens and residents in the country since 2022.
In a threat assessment given by the Counter Terrorism Operations Centre in London in October 2024, MI5 Director-General Ken McCallum said that the Islamic Republic was making extensive use of criminals, “from international drug traffickers to low-level crooks,” to target British citizens and residents. McCallum said security forces had foiled 20 Iranian-backed plots.
Case in point, in May, five men were arrested by London’s Metropolitan Police on suspicion of planning a terrorist attack. Four of them were Iranian nationals. Three more Iranian citizens were arrested in a counterterrorism operation the day after. The Telegraph reported that a plot had been set against the Israeli embassy in the UK.
Iran has been using criminal elements as proxies and directing attacks in other countries for years, with Australia becoming only the latest example of this.
ASIO said that it was likely that other attacks were conducted at Iran’s behest, hinting that it remains to be seen how many of the country’s antisemitic attacks were at the Islamic Regime’s orders.
The rise in antisemitic incidents across the world raises the question of how many other countries may have been victims of Iranian-backed plots.
Whether the West wishes to recognize this or not, Iran is already at war with it, using its criminal proxies to strike within sovereign borders and then cover itself in thinly veiled deniability.
Mathilda Heller and Jerusalem Post Staff contributed to this report.