The Labor government has revived unsubstantiated claims that Iran was involved in two “antisemitic” attacks in Australia over a year ago to justify its full and open support for the brazenly criminal US-Israeli war against Tehran launched last Saturday. 

The launch of the war also sheds new light on the visit to Australia early last month by Israeli president and war criminal Isaac Herzog. It is evident that a central purpose was to discuss the impending war crime and the Labor government’s support for it.

In rushing to be among the first US allies to endorse the illegal war, Labor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and other government leaders have repeated all of the lies of President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—from the US-Israeli claims of a non-existent Iranian “nuclear threat” to the suggestion that their carpet bombing of Iranians is designed to liberate them.

The assertion of Iranian attacks on Australian soil is Labor’s original contribution to the deluge of war propaganda. It is particularly inflammatory, implying that Iran had already engaged in acts of war against US allies, thereby turning reality on its head and presenting Iran as the aggressor rather than the victim of an unprovoked and entirely illegal assault.

In his initial statement, just hours after the war began, Albanese wrote: “Iran directed at least two attacks on Australian soil in 2024. These appalling acts targeting Australia’s Jewish community were intended to create fear, divide our society and challenge our sovereignty.” The same claim has been repeated in all subsequent government statements.

What is presented as fact is based on the unsubstantiated allegations of the Australian intelligence and police. No evidence has been made public and what is known about what happened strongly suggests that Iran had no involvement whatsoever.

The two incidents in 2024 were the firebombing of Lewis’ Continental Kitchen in Sydney on October 20 and the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne on December 6. Why Iran would orchestrate an attack against a small eatery in Sydney and a synagogue in Melbourne whose congregation opposes Zionism has never been explained.

The Lewis’ Continental Kitchen arson was one of a series of strange attacks involving crude anti-Israel graffiti, sometimes antisemitic, and on occasion accompanied by similarly crude fires. The incidents took place in the eastern suburbs of Sydney between October 2024 and January 2025.

In March 2025, after months of hysteria about a wave of antisemitism, the Australian Federal Police and the New South Wales Police described all of the attacks as “hoaxes.” They had been perpetrated, not by politically-motivated antisemites, but by relatively small-time criminals, apparently for money.

The criminals, including those who had allegedly perpetrated the firebombing of Lewis’ Continental Kitchen were arrested and charged. It was never clear who had paid them, though the AFP pointed the finger at more significant criminals living abroad. The attack on the Kitchen was almost comically amateurish. Days before, the alleged criminals had gone to the wrong location, mistakenly firebombing a brewery, rather than a Kosher restaurant.

The attack on the Adass Israel Synagogue did not entirely fit the pattern of the hoax incidents. It occurred in Melbourne, not Sydney. The building was gutted by the arson. Several worshippers had been inside at the time, thankfully surviving the attack which could have had deadly consequences. But again, when the alleged perpetrators were apprehended, they turned out to be ideologically non-aligned criminals acting for money paid by unknown parties.

For months after the admission that the Sydney attacks were a “hoax,” there was an embarrassed silence from governments and the corporate media. The Labor governments at the federal and the NSW level had invoked the attacks to ram through anti-democratic hate speech laws, directed against legitimate political speech. The attacks had been used to vilify the mass opposition to the Israeli genocide in Gaza, falsely presenting it as antisemitic and a threat to public safety.

Then, almost six months after the admission of the “hoax” and without any clear explanation of who had orchestrated it, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese suddenly changed his tune. He delivered an August press conference alongside Mike Burgess, the head of the domestic spy agency, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO).

Burgess asserted that the Lewis’ Continental Kitchen and Adass Israel firebombings had been orchestrated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Burgess provided no evidence and no explanation of how ASIO came to its conclusion. He offered only vague references to various “layers” and “cutouts” used by the Iranian state to direct Australian street criminals who perpetrated the attacks. 

Despite Iranian denials and the absence of any factual basis for the claims, Albanese proclaimed that he was expelling Iran’s ambassador—the first time Australia had carried out such an action against any country since World War II. The IRGC, a key component of the Iranian state apparatus, was listed as a terrorist organisation. These were wartime measures, aimed at vilifying and isolating the Iranian government, and were lauded by Trump and Israeli leaders.

Very rapidly, it was revealed that ASIO had relied on intelligence from Mossad, the notorious Israeli spy agency. Pro-Zionist Sky News commentator Sharri Markson reported that a “major tip-off” from Israeli intelligence “assisted ASIO during its investigation unravelling the Iran terror attacks.” Two months later, Mossad named an IRGC official who it claimed had orchestrated the attacks and others internationally.

Mossad is a murderous and criminal organisation, whose modus operandi is dirty tricks, assassinations and terrorist attacks. It has orchestrated the murder of numerous Iranians, including civilian scientists, a mass terror attack in Lebanon in 2024 involving pagers tampered with explosives and actions violating Australian sovereignty, such as the use by its operatives of stolen and forged Australian passports.

Mossad’s attempt to blame Iran for the attacks lacks any credibility whatsoever. In fact it raises disturbing questions, as to whether the Israeli agency may have had a hand in orchestrating the hoax attacks in Australia itself.

In any event, since the Albanese-Burgess announcement, the story of Iranian involvement has only grown more doubtful. 

The criminals who allegedly perpetrated the attacks are appearing before the courts. The charges make no single mention of any involvement of the Iranian government. The NSW Police confirmed late last year they had no information about Iranian involvement in the Lewis’ Continental Kitchen incident. The charges themselves are for arson and criminal damage, not terrorism or foreign interference.

The alleged perpetrators of the two firebombings cited by Albanese are out on bail, despite ASIO’s accusations that they acted as the unwitting instruments of “Iranian terrorism.” The story simply does not add up.

Australia’s increasingly close ties with the Israeli state were also demonstrated early last month, when the Labor government rolled out the red carpet for its president and war criminal Isaac Herzog. He was supposedly visiting the country to condole victims of the December 14, Bondi terrorist atrocity in Sydney in which two gunmen shot and killed 15 people attending a Jewish event.

Labor ignored the fact that a UN inquiry last year found that Herzog had incited genocide in Gaza. It presented him as a titular and even non-political figurehead, whose sole interest was in mourning those slain at Bondi.

Herzog himself quickly dispensed with those pretences, aggressively promoting Israel throughout his trip. As the four-day visit went on, his public comments increasingly focussed on the need to “confront” Iran, which he accused of being a threat to the Middle East and the world. Standing along Herzog, Albanese recalled the bogus claim that Iran had carried out attacks in Australia and boasted of his expulsion of the ambassador.

It is now obvious that the real purpose of Herzog’s visit was to ensure that Australia was lined up behind the next stage of aggression against Iran—the war that has now been launched. Yesterday, it was revealed that Herzog had a secret meeting at ASIO headquarters—no doubt to cement closer relations with Mossad and the Israeli state. 

That reality underscores the fact that Labor is heavily involved in the war, whatever its cynical and lying attempts to present itself as a “minor player” in the Middle East. It is a linchpin of a lawless US-led alliance currently bombarding Iran, providing key intelligence via the Pine Gap spy base in Central Australia, including for the targeting of strikes, as well as unwavering political support.

While the red carpet for Herzog was a signal of Labor’s support for all-out war in the Middle East, the state Labor government’s brutal police attacks on those who protested against the Israeli war criminal in Sydney was a message that opposition to the unfolding atrocities will be met with repression.