A tip from Israeli intelligence helped Australia in its investigation of Iran’s orchestration of two antisemitic attacks carried out last year, Sky News Australia reported Wednesday, citing anonymous sources.
The Australian Security Intelligence Organization had already determined that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was behind the attacks on a Sydney kosher restaurant and Melbourne synagogue, both late last year, the network reported.
But Israeli intelligence gave ASIO a lead connected to one of the firebombings, the report said.
According to the report, the tip indicated that the intelligence relationship between Israel and Australia remains strong, despite a major diplomatic spat between Jerusalem and Canberra.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese accused Iran on Tuesday of being behind the attacks on Jewish sites. He said Australia will designate the IRGC as a terror group and expelled Tehran’s ambassador.
Canberra’s order for Iranian Ambassador Ahmad Sadeghi to leave within seven days was its first such expulsion of any foreign ambassador since World War II.
Australia said on Tuesday that Iran sought to disguise its involvement in two 2024 attacks, at the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne and a kosher restaurant in Sydney, by using criminals and members of organized crime gangs.
According to a Wednesday report, bungling criminals twice targeted the wrong Sydney venue before eventually torching the restaurant.
Australia’s intelligence agency also said it traced to Iran the funding of criminals who allegedly set fire to the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne in December, even as those charged with the crime were likely unaware Tehran was their puppet master.
Australia’s spy chief Mike Burgess said a series of “cut outs,” an intelligence term for intermediaries, were used to conceal Iran’s involvement in the attacks, and warned that the country may have orchestrated others.
Canberra is the latest Western government to accuse Iran of carrying out hostile covert activities on its soil.
Last month, 14 countries, including Britain, the US, and France, condemned what they called a surge in assassination, kidnapping, and harassment plots by Iranian intelligence services.
Israeli intelligence has a history of tipping off foreign counterparts when it has information that could help them thwart attacks on their soil.
In 2017, Israeli intelligence informed ASIO of a plot to bomb an Etihad Airways flight from Sydney, Sky News Australia noted.
Australian Jews have been frustrated by what they say has been the government’s failure to rein in antisemitic attacks and violent rhetoric.
Anti-Jewish activity in Australia skyrocketed in the year after Hamas terrorists launched the war against Israel on October 7, 2023. Some 2,062 incidents were recorded between October 2023 and September 2024, compared to 495 incidents a year earlier, according to data from the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ).
In recent months, Jews there have seen synagogues, schools, and homes firebombed, two nurses threatening to kill Jewish patients in their hospital, and the discovery of a trailer filled with explosives said to have been intended to cause a mass-casualty event at a Sydney synagogue.
The country’s recent decision to recognize a Palestinian state at the United Nations General Assembly in September has exacerbated a growing sense of alienation among the country’s 120,000-strong Jewish community and sparked a sharp war of words between Albanese’s government and Israeli officials.
Zev Stub contributed to this report.