It’s hard to see how orchestrating anti-Semitic attacks in Australia would advance Iranian interests more than the interests of some other state, like, say, just for example, Israel.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at an event in Victoria in February. (Samuel Phelps / Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade / CC BY 4.0)
By Caitlin Johnstone
CaitlinJohnstone.com.au
Listen to Tim Foley reading this article.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced that Canberra will be expelling the Iranian ambassador and legislating to list Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist group.
Albanese says the move is because an assessment by the intelligence agency Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) has concluded that Iran used a “complex web of proxies” to orchestrate two anti-Semitic arson attacks in Australia in order to “undermine social cohesion and sow discord.”
As you might expect, not one shred of evidence has been provided for this assertion, much less the giant mountain of rock-solid proof required for intelligence agency credibility in a post-Iraq invasion world.
This hasn’t stopped the Murdoch press from going ballistic and framing the assertion as a “bombshell revelation” of an established fact.
It also hasn’t stopped Australia’s state broadcaster the ABC from publishing an article by Laura Tingle with the flagrantly propagandistic title “Revelations Iran was behind antisemitic attacks show IRGC tentacles have reached Australia.” Evidence-free assertions made by the government are not “revelations” and to frame them as such is journalistic malpractice.
This is labeled “Analysis” but it’s just brazen state propaganda. There have been no “revelations” about Iran being behind antisemitic attacks, there have been evidence-free assertions by an intelligence agency repeated by the prime minister. Shame on @latingle and @abcnews. pic.twitter.com/NMjgHBCcS8
— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) August 26, 2025
The Israeli government has publicly claimed credit for pressuring Albanese to take these actions, after its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, personally inserted himself into Australian affairs by repeatedly publicly expressing outrage about alleged anti-Semitic incidents in Australia.
Anyway, here are 21 questions we should all be asking about these new claims:
1. Where is the evidence?
2. May we please see the evidence?
3. Why can’t we see the evidence?
4. In what way would it benefit Iran to orchestrate antisemitic attacks in Australia?
5. In what way would it benefit Iran to “undermine social cohesion and sow discord” in Australia?
6. Please explain how orchestrating anti-Semitic attacks in Australia would advance Iranian interests more than the interests of some other state, like, say, just for example, Israel?
7. What foreign intelligence agencies were involved in helping ASIO gather the information it used to make its assessment about the Iranian involvement in these incidents?
8. What were the names of all the people in the “complex web of proxies” allegedly used to conduct these attacks which ASIO claims ultimately traced back to Tehran?
9. Does Anthony Albanese’s announcement that Iran is staging anti-Semitic attacks in Australia have anything to do with Benjamin Netanyahu’s stern letter to Albanese a week earlier demanding that the prime minister take action on alleged anti-Semitic incidents in Australia by the deadline of Sept. 23?
10. Does Albanese’s announcement that Iran is staging anti-Semitic attacks in Australia have anything to do with the fact that Israel is reportedly very close to initiating another war with Iran?
11. Does Albanese’s announcement that Iran is staging anti-Semitic attacks in Australia have anything to do with the way Australians have been filling the streets in massive numbers to protest the Gaza holocaust?
12. Why kick out the Iranian ambassador and designate the IRGC as a terrorist group while keeping the Israeli ambassador in Australia and doing absolutely nothing to stop the IDF during an active genocide?
13. Which state benefits more from the Australian government’s efforts to stomp out free speech in the name of curbing anti-Semitic incidents: Iran or Israel?
14. Which state would benefit more from fomenting hostilities between Canberra and Tehran: Iran or Israel?
15. Are we being asked to forget the way Australian intelligence services facilitated the lies that led to the invasion of Iraq, or simply to ignore this?
16. Are we being asked to forget the fact that we’ve been lied to and manipulated about all things involving Israel for the last two years, or simply to ignore this?
17. Are we being asked to forget that the claims about “anti-Semitic attacks” in Australia have been exposed as bogus or riddled with glaring plot holes over and over again since 2023, or simply to ignore this?
18. Are we being asked to forget that supporters of Israel have an extensive history of staging false anti-Semitic incidents in order to advance the interests of the Zionist state, or simply to ignore this?
19. Does the Australian government believe Australians are all complete slobbering idiots?
2o. Does the Australian government believe Australians are all high on ayahuasca?
21. What specific mental illness, intellectual disability, or chemically-induced altered state of consciousness does the Australian government believe Australians are all suffering from which would cause us to accept these unfounded assertions as true?
Of course none of these questions will ever be answered by anyone with real power. The reason it’s ASIO telling us this happened instead of police or investigative journalists is because police and journalists are expected to lay out the evidence for their assertions, while intelligence agencies are not.
Whenever the powerful present us with evidence-free incendiary claims of significant consequence, I like to remind my readers of Hitchens’ razor: “What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.”
It sure was selfless of the Iranians to orchestrate these attacks against their own interests, solely to benefit the interests of Israel, just as hundreds of thousands of Australians are filling the streets in protest against Israel’s genocidal atrocities, and just as Israel prepares for war with Iran. That sure was kind and charitable of them.
Bunch of top blokes, those Iranians. It’s too bad they’re terrorists now.
Caitlin Johnstone’s work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following her on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud, YouTube, or throwing some money into her tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy her books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff she publishes is to subscribe to the mailing list at her website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything she publishes. For more info on who she is, where she stands and what she’s trying to do with her platform, click here. All works are co-authored with her American husband Tim Foley.
This article is from CaitlinJohnstone.com.au and re-published with permission.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
The lies coming out of Western governments regarding Iran and frankly about geopolitics in general are not even clever. They are absurdly amateurish. Thus proving our leadership doesn’t particularly care if we believe what they say or not.
The idiot Australian PM, the ALP/Lib-NP uniparty, and of course the secret police, ASIO, are all completely entranced by Netanyahu and Mossad. These pro-imperialist morons love to swallow and regurgitate every tall tale that Mossad spoon feeds them.
Meanwhile, genuine anti-semites in Australia, overwhelmingly the local Nazis with their decades-long track record of vandalising synagogues, are conveniently given a green light by ASIO to continue committing these false flag ops — all in the name of whipping up a war fervour for more attacks on Iran by the genocidal Zionist entity and its equally culpable US godfather and vassals like Australia’s rulers.
When Israel next attacks Iran, and consequently is all but destroyed by Iran’s counter-barrage of precision targetted hypersonic missiles, we’ll see the likes of Albanese et al. howling and whipping up even more fervour — for the US to nuke Iran.
If the ALP can’t expel the likes of Albanese and all the other pro-imperialists infesting it, there’ll be little hope of it persisting in its pretence of being party of the Australian working class. Remember Billy Hughes!
Seems the Zionists learned an important lesson from Nazi Germany; so also their current 5 Eyes Anglophoney govt. allies.
The Reichstag fire.
I couldn’t get through the first news article I saw on this without thinking “who’s going to believe it on any level?”.
Impeccable logic. Caitlin gets it right every time.
jack
Bibi gave the PM a deadline?! Let that sink in.
What was the deadline for and what do we have to fear?
The peoples of the “Western World” better show their stuff by doing what’s necessary to seriously mute the power of billionaire colonial Zionist supremacists determining ALL our wellfare. Their capacity for determining governmental decisions, corrupting University affairs (treatment of free speechifying and assembly), and incrementally destroying democracies has been and is being well witnessed today. Their apple is a rotten one.
One more question: Is Julian Assange safe in
Australia under Albanese?
No, that’s evidenced by the silence that two PMS kept not forcing the then British/US totalitarian legal dictatorship to release Julian Assange. That could affect any AU PM re-election. Both were elected by default; they were car dealers who lost their jobs.
No, that’s evidenced by the silence that two PMS kept not forcing the then British/US totalitarian legal dictatorship to release Julian Assange. That could affect any AU PM re-election. Both were elected by default; they were car dealers who lost their jobs.
Questions numbers 19, 20 and 21.
Answer: obviously yes.
And not only Australians, but the majority of western governments complicit in this genocide.
These Zio style blatant lies against the Iranian govt are obviously an effort to drum up the notion that Iran is a “state sponsor of terror hiding under your bed at night!”
Thus it’ll be easier to get the Zionized Western public on board for round two of the Israeli/Washington war against sovereign Tehran. An administration the paranoid, sadistic and hegemonic Jewish supremacists have wanted to topple for many years now.
What incentive would the Iranian govt have in attacking civilian targets in Australia when they have the capacity to launch myriad high caliber missiles into Tel Aviv and can shut down commercial shipping channels if need be?