Based on an Australian intelligence “assessment,” the Australian government on Tuesday expelled Iran’s ambassador and three other embassy officials for allegedly planning an attack on a Melbourne synagogue last December.
By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News
Australia has expelled Iran’s ambassador and designated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) a terrorist organization on Tuesday after Australian intelligence said the Iranian government was behind the firebombing of a Jewish temple in Melbourne last year as well as other “anti-semitic” attacks in the country.
The move comes just days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly humiliated Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in a post on X for being “a weak politician who betrayed Israel and abandoned Australia’s Jews” after Albanese said Australia would follow several European nations and recognize the state of Palestine. Netanyahu wrote in an Aug. 17 letter to Albanese that was made public:
“Prime Minister, antisemitism is a cancer. It spreads when leaders stay silent. It retreats when leaders act. I call upon you to replace weakness with action, appeasement with resolve, and to do so by a clear date: the Jewish New Year, September 23, 2025.”
The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) did not provide any evidence to prove Iran’s involvement last December in the Adass synagogue attack, which caused millions of dollars of damage but injured no one. It simply said it was their assessment based on secret evidence that Iran was involved.
As Australia has given Ambassador Ahmad Sadeghi and three other Iranian officials seven days to leave the country they will never be put on trial and no evidence need be presented and tested in court.
The announcement of Iran’s guilt by Albanese Tuesday in what was presented as an open and shut case, seeks to put an end to the story, closing off any avenue of inquiry that might lead to another foreign actor behind the attacks. Police early on said foreigners were involved in the planning of the attacks who had hired low level local criminals to carry out the acts. Arrests will stop at these hired street thugs.
Left unexplained is why Iran would carry out attacks on Jewish property in faraway Australia if indeed the Iranian government is motivated by hatred of Jews, rather than enmity with the Israeli government.
Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette, the London Daily Mail and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times. He is the author of two books, A Political Odyssey, with Sen. Mike Gravel, foreword by Daniel Ellsberg; and How I Lost By Hillary Clinton, foreword by Julian Assange.
Why the hell would Iran do all these things when they don’t even have a nuclear bomb. (Yet)
They are NOT looking for trouble…..WE ARE!
I DO NOT believe any of this crap about Iran. It’s a set up, so we can bomb, bomb, bomb Iran.
all lies!
Absolutely right , Judith. The zionists use any means to provoke another attack on Iran, and they already dominate the American Congress.
98 years old. A woman. A Jew.
Full disclosure: Yesterday it suddenly became clear to me that to express any understanding and compassion for the Palestinian people living through their complete destruction by Israel is to be an anti-Semite!!!! I am guilty of anti-Semitism.
If being a Palestinian means one is definable as a member of Hamas. Then being an American am I definable as a supporter and admirer of Trump. I am NOT guilty of being a part of those who wear the red cap of MAGA
L&B&L
“The Khobar Towers bombing, which killed 19 US servicemen and wounded 372, is one of the events that US officials and news media routinely mention as proof of Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism. […] But an investigation of the Khobar Towers case that I conducted in 2009, based on interviews with more than a dozen former FBI, CIA and other administration officials knowledgeable about the official investigation, reveals a very different story. […] From the beginning of the investigation, the FBI and CIA were determined to focus solely on evidence of Iranian involvement and to exclude leads linking al Qaeda to the blast. FBI and CIA experts on bin Laden who offered to assist in the investigation were rebuffed.”
Source:
Gareth Porter, “Who Bombed Khobar Towers? Anatomy of a Crooked Terrorism Investigation,” Truthout, Sep. 1, 2015
“[The late Alberto] Nisman was so convinced of Iran’s guilt [for the 1994 Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA) bombing in Argentina] that he was ready to see almost any fact as supporting evidence, even when there was an obvious reason for doubting its relevance. For example, he cited Rabbani’s shopping for a van ‘similar to the one that exploded in front of the AMIA building a few months later.’ In fact, however, as I reported in 2008, the Argentine investigation files include the original intelligence report on the surveillance of Rabbani showing that Rabbani’s visit to the car dealer was not ‘a few months’ before the bombing, but a full fifteen months earlier. […] The fact that Nisman’s two indictments related to Iran and AMIA were extremely tendentious obviously does not dispose of the question of who killed him. But whatever the reason for his being killed, it wasn’t because he had revealed irrefutable truths about AMIA and Argentine government policy.”
Source:
Gareth Porter, “The Nisman Murder and the AMIA Terror Bombing: A Tangled Thread,” Middle East Eye (MEE), Feb. 13, 2015
Iran has Jewish parliamentarians. There is a Jewish very old Jewish community in Iran that opposes Zionism so it is unlikely that the state of Iran is “antisemitic.”
Zionism is a stage 4 metastatic cancer that is rotting too many brains.
Then again, the holocaust in occupied Palestine is very profitable so it unlikely that plutocrats and their puppets will protest.
There are Arabs in the Israeli Knesset, so I’m not sure about the relevance of Jewish parliamentarians in Iran.
“[T]he Qods Force has a reputation for careful, methodical work – as well as effective use of local proxies, and ultimately their pragmatic deployment by Tehran as covert tools to expand Iran’s influence across a region in flux. That explains why Iran experts are raising questions about fresh US charges of an Iran-backed bomb plot, this time to kill the Saudi ambassador to Washington and blow up the Saudi and Israeli embassies. A criminal complaint filed by US prosecutors on Tuesday charge Mansour Arbabsiar – a naturalized US citizen with an Iranian passport from Corpus Christi, Texas – and Gholam Shakuri, ‘an Iran-based member of Iran’s Qods Force,’ with plotting to kill the Saudi diplomat on US soil in an operation ‘directed by factions of the Iranian government.’
[…]
Mr. Arbabsiar may have arranged for $100,000 to be transferred from Iran as a downpayment of $1.5 million for the hit, as US charges indicate. Arbabsiar may also have boasted to one alleged accomplice in the plot – an associate of Mexico’s Zeta drug cartel, who also happened to be an informant of the US Drug Enforcement Administration – that his cousin was a ‘big general’ in the Iranian military. While also describing a series of potential attacks to the associate, he may even have stated – apparently in secretly taped conversations – that mass American casualties as a result were not a problem: ‘They want that guy [the ambassador] done [killed], if the hundred go with him f**k ’em,’ reads the legal complaint.
But Iran specialists who have followed the Islamic Republic for years [including Alireza Nader, Gary Sick, Muhammad Sahimi, and Kenneth Katzman] say that many details in the alleged plot just don’t add up [for additional reportage of skepticism, see “Experts Question Why Iran Would Put Complex Assassination Plot Against Saudi Ambassador in the Hands of Used Car Salesman,” Studio B (Fox News), May 2, 2013].”
Source:
Scott Peterson, “Used-Car Salesman as Iran Proxy? Why Assassination Plot Doesn’t Add Up for Experts,” The Christian Science Monitor, Oct. 12, 2011
Antisemitism spreads when leaders stay silent, and retreats when leaders act?
Hitler was both vocally and actively antisemitic.
More shit from the Western halls of power you just can’t make up. All of the Western leaders behaving like scared puppies when scolded by a genocidal maniac for disloyalty.
Sounds like the Israelis are ginning up the entire world to support the genocide in Gaza by blaming everything that happens to Jews is a product of Iran. Why doesn’t it occur to them that a false flag attack by Mossad is probably possible or even probable? Could it be that the Australian Government had planned to recognize Palestine? Hmmm
Context: ‘A room with a view’ to the other side of lies!
It can no longer be kept a secret, the zealous Nationalist Zionist state Israel is Colonist and is attempting the final solution of eradication – applying all methods of genocide on all indigenous Arab Palestinians, from their lands.
If anti semitism can be considered a form of racism dependent on the school of thought, the same may be said of anti-Arab Palestianism, even more apt, for religion is nothing more than a construct of the human mind. Race is a whole other academic subject; an idea or ideology created by societies to categorize people based on perceived biological similarities or more expressly, the opposite. It is an attempt to categorize peoples primarily by their physical differences.
Institutional religions/belief systems are no better than tools to implement “divide and rule” policies, which is what all hierarchical structures are about, wherein all powers of discretion, in these rigid structures flows from the top down, and what all wars, in essence, are about. Most professed global democracies today, definitely not excluded from the paradigm.
Netanyahu’s statement “antisemitism is a cancer” is no more valid than is ad hominem political rhetoric: an essential, constantly abusive and harmful treatment tool, that he is applying on the body politic he is ‘doctoring’, with his usual, overly ample application of his “divide and rule” tactics from his propaganda armory.
Simply returning the disfavor: Doing unto him what he is attempting to do unto us all!
Is “by a clear date: the Jewish New Year, September 23, 2025” Netanyahu’s threat for yet another preemptive religious war, this time against Iran?
‘Is “by a clear date: the Jewish New Year, September 23, 2025” Netanyahu’s threat for yet another preemptive religious war, this time against Iran?’
No. This is a direct threat against Albanese and by implication, Australia. This was a warning we can expect more “unrest” and chaos if we don’t comply. Horrible. It’s a blackmail.
Netanyahu is “oh so personal” attacking his what, good friend(?) Anthony Albanese. Bibi Netanyahu, just sliced and diced Anthony, like the true lascivious predator that he is, and what did good little Tony do? Bent the knee. “Yes, Master. I am not weak. I will follow you, grrr”
It seems Anthony has now forgotten everything, as Semites are wiped from the table of Palestine, and the “Master” Bibi sings -“forget, forget, my little minions” and readies the napkin and plate for the next assault of divide and rule, and by deception and bullying, win.
Sad, isn’t it, how foolish we, as a nation, stand?
“The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) did not provide any evidence to prove Iran’s involvement last December in the Adass synagogue attack, which caused millions of dollars of damage but injured no one. It simply said it was their assessment…”
Tell me you’re controlled by Zionist freaks without telling me you’re controlled by Zionist freaks.
Smacks of past attacks which conveniently fall into place in a narrative in which Israel, Israelis, and Jews outside of Israel are eternal victims, such as the campaign of bombings in the Arab world aimed at inducing Mizrahi Jews to emigrate to Israel.
hxxps://www.middleeasteye.net/news/iraq-jews-attacks-zionist-role-confirmed-operative-police-report
The lack of rigor among the mainstream press seems unprecedented, though I’m sure this is just recency bias on my part. My thanks to consortiumnews for bucking the trend.
False flag attacks are still widely used and are still very effective.
Pah! Who needs evidence, when an official Israeli monster states something is true?
I mean, it’s not like they’ve spent the whole time acting under a motto akin to: ‘By Audacious Lies, Do We Get Everything We Want’, is it.
I mean, in no way whatsoever could their actions be construed as anything other than, ahem, “the MOST moral” of acts, surely.
I mean, it’s so obviously anti-Semitic to speak out against the ethnic cleansing of Semitic men, women and children, especially the ‘cleansing’ of Semitic infants. So obvious only an evil anti-Semite would ever dare think differently.
And of course, Israelis are the ‘real’ Semites because they’re predominantly white-skinned, speak American and, apparently, have stars upon thars. Sigh.
In all seriousness, I’m actually quite shocked to be sitting here actually for once agreeing with something that came out of that utterly despicable, deranged psycho’s mouth: “History will remember Albanese for what he is: A weak politician.”
P.S: So happy to see CN’s chat remains the same and hasn’t had the inclusion of a social scoring system of up or down-voting, which I was dreading seeing appear, like so many other sites that were once great. May it forever be the case!
A possible ‘false flag’ operation by Israel.
More than possible, Tony.
How any credibility can be given to Netanyahu, in any way at all when the whole world is now totally convinced that the lies that pour from the Israeli government on every subject, controlled by this same criminal, Netanyahu are the order of the day.
The world is now at the stage of disregarding every statement from Israel and its propagandists as lies.
Laughable nonsense. The attacks were funded by Mossad sayanim of the Australian Jewish Association. Only a crackhead would believe Iran was involved.