Like a spy novel: How Iran orchestrated attacks on Australian shores

This week Canberra turned into a John le Carre novel, with the stunning revelation from the head of ASIO Mike Burgess, that the state of Iran directed at least two attacks on Australia’s Jewish community, on Australian soil. As a consequence, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese expelled the Iranian Ambassador from the country. 

Joining Jacqueline Maley to discuss these dramatic developments, is chief political correspondent Paul Sakkal, and national security correspondent Matthew Knott.

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Episode Transcript

S1 (00:00):
From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
This is inside politics. I'm Jacqueline Maley. It's Friday, August 29th.
This week, Canberra turned into a John le Carré novel
with the stunning revelation from the head of ASIO, Mike Burgess,
that the state of Iran directed at least two attacks
on Australia's Jewish community on Australian soil. As a consequence,

(00:23):
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese expelled the Iranian ambassador from the country.
Here to discuss these dramatic developments, we have our chief
political correspondent, Paul Circle, and our national security correspondent, Matthew Knott.
We must acknowledge briefly, but importantly, that Paul Circle won

(00:43):
an important journalistic award this week at the Midwinter Ball,
which was the night before this podcast is being filmed.
And yet he looked so fresh faced. But Paul won
Press Gallery Journalist of the year, which was extremely well deserved.

S2 (00:58):
Thank you. I've put eyeshadow under the bags in my eyes.

S3 (01:01):
I'm just here with an IV drip and to feed
Paul Baraka.

S1 (01:06):
It's above and beyond working with the handicapped this morning. Um, Matt,
tell us all about this. How did we first find
out about this extraordinary news that basically, Iran has been
directing attacks on Australian soil?

S3 (01:18):
Well, this was a very sudden and dramatic announcement to
give a bit of an idea of the chaos, uh,
the chaotic way that things work here in Canberra. Uh,
I was at a lunch at the National Press Club
with a group of fellow foreign policy journalists, with a
visiting official from Taiwan. Uh, the food was just about

(01:41):
to be served. He was talking about trade and relations
with China. All our phones started exploding with the fact
there would be a big announcement. Something to do with Israel. Uh,
our minds initially went to. Is this something to do
with sanctions, perhaps? Uh, and then, uh, before the Prime
Minister and Foreign minister and Home Affairs minister got up,

(02:03):
it became clear, no, it's to do with Iran. And
the Prime minister got up in the courtyard and made
the very important announcement.

S4 (02:13):
Since the terrible events of October 7th, 2023, we have
witnessed a number of appalling anti-Semitic attacks against Australia's Jewish community.
I have made it clear that these sorts of incidents
have no place in Australia, and that I wanted ASIO
and the AFP to investigate as a priority. ASIO has

(02:35):
now gathered enough credible intelligence to reach a deeply disturbing
conclusion that the Iranian government directed at least two of
these attacks Iran.

S3 (02:46):
The biggest one was the attack on the synagogue in Melbourne.
This was a big deal in December, really turbocharged the
debate about anti-Semitism in Australia. It led to attacks on
Albanese from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The other one
that ASIO has identified is of a Jewish deli in Sydney.

(03:09):
They say many more could also have been wrapped up
in this. It's had major diplomatic consequences. Australia's embassy in
Tehran has been shut down and there was a very
secretive operation to get our diplomats from there out safely.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has been listed as a

(03:32):
terrorist organisation. So this is a major national security diplomatic event.

S1 (03:38):
Paul, the political response from Albanese, from Penny Wong was
immediate and it was strong.

S5 (03:45):
There is no doubt that these extraordinary and dangerous acts
of aggression, orchestrated by a foreign nation on Australian soil
have crossed a line, and that is why we have
declared Iran's ambassador to Australia persona non grata, as well
as three other Iranian officials, and they will have seven
days to leave the country.

S1 (04:07):
This is so the Iranian ambassador to Australia, Ahmad Sadeghi,
was expelled, although he's got a few days to pack
up his gear and go. Give us a sense of
how big of a deal that is.

S2 (04:16):
It's a huge deal. As you mentioned, I think not-I
just mentioned ambassadors don't get expelled every day. The last
one was in 1941. It was the Japanese ambassador, and
it was in response to Pearl Harbor. So this is
the first time an ambassador has been expelled for wrongdoing
that's actually happened on our shores. There were calls from
the opposition last term to expel this ambassador for various

(04:39):
contentious comments about Israel. He's expressed views that are widely
viewed to be anti-Semitic. Previously, he's praised the Hezbollah leader,
Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed by Israel, I think, last year.
He's a kind of radical Islamic autocrat, mouthpiece in Australia
who has been, um, yeah, the subject of controversy before,
but the government's always resisted those calls to expel him

(05:02):
because there's been a view that, given the US doesn't
have diplomatic relations with Iran, we're often used as a
back channel in the same way as the Swiss are.
And DFAT has always been of the view that that's
important and we should keep up diplomatic relations even though
we don't agree with these guys on much. So it
was a big and decisive step that the government took.
And it was it was dramatic, and it was a
reversal that was justified by the gravity of what occurred.

S1 (05:26):
Yeah. And of course, I think the government has actually
said that they don't think the ambassador himself was involved
or even perhaps aware of the operations. Let's just talk
about the operations themselves, because it's so fascinating. It's it
is something like something from a spy novel, because nobody's
saying that Iranian officials from the embassy were themselves on
the ground firebombing synagogues or Jewish owned businesses, but rather

(05:48):
they sort of contracted like a sort of chain of criminals,
some of whom were more inept than others, to do
these jobs. Matt, just tell us a little bit about
the complexity of that chain.

S3 (06:02):
Yes. And I think we'd have to say I think
there's more to be told about this. I don't know
if books will be. It's it's worth it's.

S1 (06:09):
Worth a book. I think it's fascinating.

S3 (06:11):
TV series will be made about this. Uh asio's a
very secretive organisation. But details do come out over time,
particularly when things like this have been successful and this
is being seen within the Australian system as a success
for our intelligence agencies. It took a while, but they

(06:31):
seem to have gotten to the bottom of this, and
it was clearly pretty well disguised. The fact that it's taken, say,
from the synagogue attack from December to now, to definitively
figure out that Iran was behind this, they'd clearly been
covering their tracks pretty well. Yeah. So there's still more
to learn about the way this entire thing played out.

(06:55):
But at the ground level, there was a lot of
chaos and and ineptness in the way this was carried out.
We've had details coming out in court in Sydney this
week about the ineptitude of some of those allegedly involved
in the attack on the Jewish deli there. From what
we're learning, are from court cases. You know, they went

(07:16):
to the wrong place initially to attack that they went
to twice.

S1 (07:20):
They did. They did sort of botched attempts on the
wrong business.

S3 (07:23):
Several botched attempts. They didn't know where they were going.
They went to a brewery with a similar name rather
than to the right deli. Um, one of the the
people involved was using the name James Bond on Signal
to describe himself. Yeah. And you can see from text
messages that have come out that it was all very
chaotic and shambolic.

S1 (07:44):
Paul, you wrote a story about another criminal, Kazem Hamad,
who is known to Australian authorities, as they say, who's
a sort of a tobacco kingpin in the Tobacco wars,
particularly in Melbourne. And he's suspected of conspiring more directly
with Iranian spies to carry out some some of these attacks.
Tell us about him.

S2 (08:03):
Yeah. Kaz Hamad is a is a guy who's been
written about by my colleagues at the age. Our crime
reporters a lot over the past couple of years. There's
been this campaign of firebombing tobacconists. I think there's been
about 140 Firebombings in the past 18 months or something.
It's quite extraordinary. And what's going on there is there's
a turf war between rival gangs to control the tobacco shops,

(08:24):
because there's such a roaring trade for black market cigarettes,
because of how expensive normal cigarettes are, and also illegal vapes.
And so it's a lucrative business. But there's also a
contest to be the gang that provides protection for these
illicit tobacco shops, because they get paid to do protection
to protect them against other gangs. Kaz Hamad is a

(08:45):
guy who's been accused of orchestrating this firebombing campaign to
win the turf war. He lives in the Middle East.
He's been based in Iraq and some other places from
about January. And this was reported by our investigative colleague
Nick McKenzie earlier this week. In January, authorities in Victoria.
So I think a month after the attack, the authorities

(09:07):
looked at ADUs and there was a lot of pressure
at that time to make arrests quickly because there was
such a huge political firestorm around that synagogue firebombing. And
quite quickly, the AFP learnt who the perpetrators were in
terms of the people who were actually in the car,
who through the through the fire, they determined pretty quickly
that they were young guys from the western suburbs with
no clear motive, who looked like classic petty criminals. But

(09:30):
the AFP didn't want to make arrests and look like
they'd wrapped this up before publicly revealing and getting to
the bottom of what they describe privately as the puppet masters. Yeah,
they didn't want to put these kids on trial because
no one would understand the motive. They wanted to get
to the reason why they were asked to do this.
Who was paying them? Yeah. And this took months and months.
In January, there was the first suggestion from the AFP

(09:53):
that foreign actors might be involved. They didn't necessarily say
foreign states. They just said there are potentially foreign elements
here which are orchestrating these attacks. But it became clear
over time that there was the use of encrypted apps
where people from foreign countries were speaking to criminals in
Australia using several different layers of middlemen. At some point,

(10:16):
middlemen at some point, those associates are those people are
known to the IRGC. It's unclear what at what point
up the food chain. Those people know they are being
directed by Iranian authorities. But right at the lowest point
of the food chain, there are these petty criminals who
use these new encrypted apps, which are effectively being described
to me as like the Uber Eats of crime, where

(10:39):
you log into this app, you can only get a
link to the app if you're part of a criminal
network and jobs come up for firebombings for drive by shootings,
things of that nature. You don't know who is being, uh,
who is offering you the money. You just know there's
an encrypted link that will send you cash. You get
told what the job is and you go and do
the job. And so that creates this anonymized system where

(11:01):
there is someone at the top trying to get a
job done, but you're none the wiser as to who's
directing you. And so the idea and this was reported
by our colleague Nick McKenzie as to why Cass Hamad would,
would want to take out these actions on behalf of
the Iranian government or to assist them is because Iran
has a lot of influence, obviously, both in in Iran
but also across the Middle East. And if he's helping

(11:23):
them run their foreign interference practices in Australia, they might
give him safe harbor in the region and allow him
to continue to run his crime empire free of any
interference from Australian authorities.

S1 (11:33):
So ASIO has particularly said that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard
Corps is responsible for this. So what is that organization, Matt?
How are they related to the Islamic regime and the Ayatollah?

S3 (11:44):
Yeah, it's a fascinating and absolutely huge part of the
Iranian system that doesn't have clear parallels in any way
to Australia or what we'd be familiar with in now, uh, nations, uh,
they're kind of a parallel, uh, military in some ways.
So they have an estimated 150,000 troops, for example, and

(12:07):
they have their own, uh, Navy and armed forces and weapons.
And that's on top of the official, uh, Iranian military.
But then there's more of a kind of psychological secret
operations side to it in which, uh, people from the
officials from the IRGC are responsible for terrorist attacks, essentially

(12:27):
around the world. So people who follow them are not
surprised at all by what has come out in Australia.
It's interesting to them that Australia is being targeted, but
this is very much the M.O. of the way they operate. Obviously,
Iran and Israel are essentially sworn enemies. They're competing for

(12:47):
dominance in the Middle East. Iran says that it wants
to wipe Israel off the map and funds proxies, you know,
attacking Israel. Israel has been bombing nuclear facilities in Iran,
so Israeli targets are a common place for the IRGC
around the world and Jewish sites as well. Like this.

(13:11):
There's been assassination attempts, bombings of Israeli embassies all over
the world, places like Thailand, Argentina, um, events in Europe, France,
the United States. You know, Iran is believed to have
been behind assassination attempts on Donald Trump. So there's a
long history of this type of behavior, and now it's

(13:32):
Australia that's experiencing it. And actually an ASIO director general,
Mike Burgess, has for several years been listing Iran as
one of the principal countries of concern for foreign interference,
alongside China and Russia.

S2 (13:48):
And Kylie Moore-gilbert, who's the Australian who was captured in
Iran for years, wrote in our papers earlier this week
that when she was in jail, she was questioned by
Iranians about synagogues and Jewish figures in Australia. There was
a guy arrested in Berlin in January by German authorities
who was believed to be spying for Iran, going around,
finding Jewish sites. So this is happening. This is a live, uh,

(14:11):
kind of systemic pattern of global anti-Semitism, which, I mean,
there's been a narrative that's formed this week, which I've
seen online in particular, which is, you know, along the
lines of these revelations about Iran show that there is
no anti-Semitism problem in Australia. And to I understand the
argument to some extent, but if you're a Jewish person
living in Australia and you're feeling as if there is

(14:32):
this global, uh, kind of superpower that is determined to
target Jews all across the world, does it make you
feel any less safe?

S1 (14:40):
No, it's it's it's it's terrifying. It would be even
more frightening, I think.

S3 (14:44):
No. And the Jewish community is saying essentially on this, uh,
we warned you that Iran was a terrible actor. There
are quotes from parliamentary inquiries from a few years ago
in which there are people saying, we have security at
Jewish sites because we're afraid of Iran.

S1 (15:01):
Yeah. So and the Iranian diaspora, elements of it in
Australia have have been saying the same thing, too, because
they say that they've experienced harassment, um, from, um, from
people representing the regime on Australian soil.

S2 (15:13):
So if it's the wrong word to describe Iran, by
the way, they're not a superpower, but they are they
are a powerful state which has a very well funded
network of global foreign interference.

S1 (15:23):
If it's not an obvious question, what is the strategic
interest of Iran or the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in
these kinds of attacks in Australia? Is it to sow
social disharmony within Australia or community disharmony, or is it
just pure terrorism? The spreading of terror? Is it to
advance Iran's interests in any kind of strategic or practical way?

(15:44):
Like why would they why would they do this?

S3 (15:47):
Yeah, I've been speaking to experts about this. And look,
there are there are different theories. Like as we said before,
this isn't a new thing. Uh, Australia? Yeah, it's far away,
but we're we're an important country, to be honest. We're
a very close ally of the United States, which is
another sworn enemy of Iran. We've traditionally been close to Israel.

(16:08):
That's obviously been changing since the the war in Gaza.
We have significant and influential Jewish and Iranian communities here.
But why now and why in this way? There are
a lot of different speculations about that and whether this
was a smart strategy or not. I was speaking to
one expert yesterday who was saying it's it's baffling on

(16:29):
the surface because there was always the risk with something
like this that attacks on Jewish sites, you know, would
create more sympathy for the Jewish community.

S1 (16:38):
And heightened awareness of anti-Semitism and.

S3 (16:40):
Heightened awareness of anti-Semitism could create more sympathy for Israel,
to the extent that people link the two in their minds.
So there's a risk to it. There's a lot of
talk about the the way the, uh, Iranian government is
working right now. I mean, they're in a very, very
weakened state. You know, the way they've come under attack

(17:01):
from Israel and the the US, they're in a pretty
beleaguered economic state. Are their key proxies in the region
have either been taken out or weakened? So, say, in
the past year what's happened to Iran is really dramatic.
They're absolutely on the back foot. Different factions competing for influence. Yeah.

(17:24):
Some people I was speaking to would be saying, you know,
this is the IRGC showing that, you know, we can
cause some disruption in Australia. That is their M.O. is
to foment chaos around the world. So if Australia's in
a state of chaos with different elements of society fighting
each other, that's a good thing. But exactly what the

(17:44):
ultimate strategic rationale was for them. Uh, you know, about
these specific incidents. We don't fully know that yet.

S1 (17:52):
Yeah. Um, I just want to ask quickly about the
listing of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization,
because that's been another political response, Paul, to what's happened
this week. But there has been some basically argument or,
you know, the coalition has attacked the government for not
having listed this organization as a terror group before. What's
happened there?

S2 (18:12):
Yeah. So this is kind of the political talking point
this week. It's a it's a tool that the opposition
can use to hit the government over the head with,
to make them appear flat footed on this and reactive
in 2022 and three, there were widespread protests after the
killing of a young Iranian woman, Mahsa Amini, who died

(18:33):
after being treated brutally by the Iranian morality police because
she wasn't wearing a hijab. This sparked huge protests in Iran,
one of the biggest in many years, and a really
brutal crackdown from the Iranian government. There was tortures, there
was lots of, um, there were lots of people died
in the crackdown. They shut down the internet. They went
into universities. It was. It was a real it was

(18:55):
a real show of force by the regime. And there
were huge protests in Australia at that time, too. There's
about 30,000 Iranians in Melbourne, and they were protesting regularly
and regularly in the CBD. Many of those people protesting,
including some of the leaders, were telling the Australian government
at the time, and Claire O'Neill was the home affairs minister.
She's now the housing minister that they were being followed
to their homes. They were having the air out of

(19:17):
their tyres. Uh, they were being watched and they believed
that there were IRGC or Iranian government linked figures in
Australia kind of monitoring this protest movement and trying to
harm them and strike fear into them. And this is
how autocratic and, you know, uh, you know, halfway autocratic
regimes like Modi in India, uh, the Chinese government, they're

(19:39):
highly suspicious and paranoid governments. So they they monitor their
diasporas closely. So that kind of that behaviour led to
calls from the coalition at that time to list the
IRGC as a terror outfit. The argument from the government
was that it's a effectively a branch of a government,
and the Criminal code in Australia doesn't allow a branch
of government to be listed as a terror organisation. You

(19:59):
can only list outfits like Hamas or ISIS because they're
not parts of a government. They're effectively paramilitary or other groups.
So the government said no at the time. They've obviously
reversed this week. There was a much stronger case to
do it this week. So the reversal is understandable. It's
totally unclear if listing them two years ago would have
had any effect.

S1 (20:19):
Would have had.

S2 (20:19):
On thwarting what's happened. But it's a it's a political line.

S1 (20:22):
Yeah. Knotty. What does it mean to be listed as
officially as a terrorist organisation? Like what practical effect does
that have?

S3 (20:28):
Look, to be honest, I think it is largely symbolic
in many ways. I mean, it makes it illegal to
say for Australians to fund or support groups like this,
but with the IRGC, that's not a super relevant thing
because they are part of the state. It's really a
way of, uh, distancing ourselves from Iran. This has been

(20:50):
a big part of what the diaspora has Jaspers wanted
is limiting all our connections. It would limit any relationships
that Australian officials could have with them, for example. But
to be honest, would this have stopped these attacks from happening?
I don't necessarily see how it would have. The IRGC
is going to keep doing what it does. You know,

(21:12):
it's got its it's got its modus operandi. Um, but yeah,
I think this is really a symbolic thing. We're saying,
how do we communicate to Iran in every way possible
that this is absolutely unacceptable? This isn't normal diplomatic espionage practice.

S2 (21:29):
And a big, big part of normal terror listings. For example,
if you list Hezbollah, that's a way for Australian authorities
to crack down on any Lebanese Australians who might be
supporting that group. As you mentioned, there's no Iranians who
are expressing any local support for, uh, the IRGC. I mean,
most Iranian Australians left after the revolution. Many of them
are from minorities like Baha'is. There was a special program

(21:52):
in the 80s to bring in persecuted religious minorities. So
it's a very different case to Hamas, Hezbollah, all of that.
And to me, the government's argument about not listing them
made some sense. And it's unorthodox.

S1 (22:02):
Yeah, it's been absolutely fascinating to read all your stuff
this week. Thanks, fellas.

S2 (22:07):
Thanks, jacki. Bye.

S1 (22:14):
Today's episode was produced by Kai Wong with technical assistance
from Debbie Harrington. Our executive producer is Tammy Mills, and
Tom McKendrick is our head of audio. To listen to
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To stay up to date with all the politics, news

(22:34):
and exclusives, visit The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald
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visiting The Age or. Subscribe. I'm Jacqueline Maley. Thank you
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