Australia's announcement yesterday came as a shocking surprise when Prime Minister Anthony Albanese took to his podium to call out the Iranian regime for being behind two antisemitic arson attacks in 2024. For years, Jewish communities across the globe have urged governments to take Iran's terror apparatus seriously, and now it is impossible to tell how many sleeper cells the regime has placed in Western and European countries, with Jewish communities as their historic prime targets.
Prime Minister Albanese revealed that Australia's top spy agency, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), had determined that the regime was responsible for plotting arson attacks against Lewis' Continental Kitchen in Sydney last October and the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne in December. Despite efforts to conceal their involvement, Albanese said it is likely that Iran directed further attacks as well.
According to some reports, these were the most dangerous examples of attacks by a foreign regime in modern Australian history. They prompted Australia to legislate the designation of the regime's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organisation. The Albanese government also expelled Tehran's ambassador and suspended operations at Australia's embassy in Tehran.
These are the correct steps for a country like Australia to take, but they are long overdue, and every nation in the West must investigate and follow suit. This is far from the first time the regime has attacked Jewish communities across the globe.
In 1992, the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires was struck by a Hezbollah suicide bomber who killed 29 civilians, including two Israelis, and injured 242 people. The blast caused the embassy building to collapse along with a nearby church, school, and apartment building. In April 2024, Argentina's second highest court found that the Iranian regime had masterminded the bombing. Two years later, the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA), a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, was targeted in another suicide bombing, this time by a terrorist who drove a bomb-laden van into the building and detonated it, killing 85 people and injuring more than 300. To this day, it remains the deadliest terror attack in Argentina's history, and the same court ruled that Iran directed the attack and that Hezbollah carried it out. The ruling also characterized Iran as a terrorist state.
The regime was also responsible for the 2012 Burgas bus bombing in Bulgaria, where a suicide bomber detonated inside a transport bus at Burgas airport as it was carrying 42 Israeli tourists, mostly young people arriving on a flight from Tel Aviv. The explosion killed the Bulgarian bus driver and five Israelis and wounded 32 others. Months later, Bulgarian Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov confirmed there was well-founded evidence that Hezbollah was behind the attack. Hezbollah, the arm of the Iranian regime based primarily in Lebanon, has since expanded its activities far beyond the Middle East, engaging in fundraising, smuggling, and logistical operations across Latin America, West Africa, and parts of Europe and North America. This should be setting off alarms across the globe, as it shows the regime in Iran has no intention of limiting its influence to its own region.
The list continues. Countries such as Azerbaijan, Turkey, Greece, and Brazil have foiled Hezbollah and Iranian plots by gathering intelligence and exposing IRGC–Hezbollah networks planning suicide attacks and kidnappings of Jews and Israelis. In June 2022, the Iranian regime finalized a significant 20-year cooperation agreement with Venezuela, expanding Hezbollah's activities in Latin America and securing easier access to challenge US interests in the Western Hemisphere.
For those who might think this is simply a Jewish or Israeli problem, the evidence proves otherwise. Iran's regime and its proxy Hezbollah have shed blood across continents, killing Americans in Beirut, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq; murdering Europeans in Paris, Bulgaria, and elsewhere; and slaughtering Arabs in Lebanon, Syria, and throughout the region. From the 1983 Marine barracks bombing to the Khobar Towers, from the streets of Buenos Aires to the battlefields of Syria, their victims have included diplomats, soldiers, aid workers, tourists, and countless civilians of every background. This is not a Jewish issue; it is a global one.
Iran's involvement in antisemitic attacks in the West vindicates what Jews have been warning for months: the rallies and encampments we are seeing are not entirely organic, but in part orchestrated by foreign regimes. If Tehran can plot terror abroad, it can bankroll encampment protests as well.
Australia's actions should serve as a wake-up call to every democracy. The Iranian regime has demonstrated time and again that it will burn synagogues in Melbourne, bomb embassies in Buenos Aires, kill Marines in Beirut, and butcher civilians in Syria with the same ruthless intent. The longer the West hesitates, the more freedom Tehran will have to export its terror. Australia has taken the right steps, but one country is not enough. Every Western democracy must thoroughly investigate Iranian networks operating on its soil, dismantle Hezbollah's fundraising and logistical infrastructure, and formally designate the IRGC as the terrorist organisation that it is. Only a coordinated and resolute front will demonstrate that Tehran's campaign of global terror will no longer be tolerated.
