COMMENTARY: By Caitlin Johnstone
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 ASIO has concluded that Iran used a “complex web of proxies” to orchestrate two antisemitic 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.
The Israeli government has publicly claimed credit for pressuring Albanese to take these actions, after Netanyahu personally inserted himself into Australian affairs by repeatedly publicly expressing outrage about alleged antisemitic incidents in Australia.
21 questions about Australia’s Iran claim. Video: Caitlin Johnstone
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 antisemitic 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 antisemitic 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 antisemitic incidents in Australia by the deadline of September 23?
10. Does Albanese’s announcement that Iran is staging antisemitic 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 antisemitic 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 antisemitic 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 “antisemitic 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 antisemitic 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 is an Australian independent journalist and poet. Her articles include The UN Torture Report On Assange Is An Indictment Of Our Entire Society. She publishes a website and Caitlin’s Newsletter. This article is republished with permission.
Dollars to donuts this was orchestrated by mossad https://t.co/2xhJxZrsGQ
— Maxine Gay (@GayMaxine) August 26, 2025
