Australia has severed diplomatic ties with Iran, expelled Tehran’s ambassador, and effectively shut down the Iranian embassy in Canberra after accusing the Islamic Republic of carrying out antisemitic attacks on two of the country’s biggest cities last year.The Iranian ambassador to Australia, Ahmad Sadeghi, and three senior embassy officials have been given seven days to leave Australia, media reports said on Tuesday (August 26). All Australian diplomats in Tehran have already left Iran.No reaction from the Iranians was forthcoming immediately, news reports said.What were these attacks that have provoked this unusually strong action?Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told a news conference in Canberra on Tuesday that the attacks were “extraordinary and dangerous acts of aggression orchestrated by a foreign nation on Australian soil”, which were aimed at “undermin[ing] social cohesion and sow[ing] discord in our community”.Australian security agencies believe that agents of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), an elite branch of Iran’s armed forces, were behind the arson attack on Lewis’ Continental Kitchen, a kosher deli in Sydney’s Bondi neighbourhood on October 20, and a fire that was started by two masked men at the Adass Israel synagogue in Melbourne on December 6.The attacks caused widespread damage, although no one was hurt.Story continues below this adIran’s agents “put lives at risk, they terrified the community and they tore at our social fabric. Iran and its proxies literally and figuratively lit the matches and fanned the flames,” Mike Burgess, director general of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), the country’s domestic intelligence agency, who was with Albanese at the news conference, said, ABC News reported.The agents had used “a complex web of proxies to hide [the IRGC’s] involvement” in the attacks, Burgess said. He said “offshore organised crime” groups had been involved in the attacks, but there was no direct involvement of Iranian diplomats or embassy staff, ABC News said.Is it unusual for Australia to take such action?Yes. Foreign Minister Penny Wong said the action against the Iranian envoy was the first time since World War II that Australia had thrown out an ambassador.However, Iran had “crossed a line”, prompting this action, Wong said. Australia will now designate IRGC as a terrorist organisation, after a law is passed urgently in parliament. The Revolutionary Guards are already a designated Foreign Terrorist Organisation (FTO) in the US.Story continues below this adAccording to the ASIO, the IRGC used several “cut-outs” to carry out the attacks. “It’s a layer cake of cut-outs between IRGC and…the alleged perpetrators conducting crimes,” the ABC news report quoted Burgess as having said.But why would Iran target Jewish establishments in Australia?Australia has one of the largest concentrations of Holocaust survivors outside of Israel. Since the war in Gaza started in October 2023, the country has witnessed a series of attacks against Jewish establishments.Included in these attacks were the two that the Australian government has now accused IRGC of having orchestrated. Burgess said on Tuesday that investigators did not believe that Iranian agencies were responsible for “every act of anti-semitism in Australia”; however, Albanese said an Iranian hand was “likely” in attacks other than the ones in Sydney and Melbourne.A Reuters report on Tuesday said that more than 2,000 antisemitic incidents were reported in Australia between October 2023 and October 2024, according to figures from the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, an umbrella group for Australia’s Jews.The Reuters report listed some key events, including:* May 25, 2024: Australia’s largest Jewish school graffitied in Melbourne;Story continues below this ad* October 13: Antisemitic graffiti on Jewish bakery in Sydney, with note left for owner reading “be careful”.* October 17: Front door of Bondi brewery Curly Lewis Brewing Company in Sydney torched.* October 20: Bondi Kosher deli Lewis’ Continental Kitchen set alight.* November 21: Cars torched, buildings vandalised in Sydney’s east, an area with a large Jewish population.* December 6: Adass Israel synagogue torched in Melbourne’s south.* December 11: Cars torched, buildings vandalised in Sydney’s east.* January 7, 2025: Man charged after allegedly threatening worshippers near the Chabad North Shore synagogue in Sydney’s north.Story continues below this ad* January 10: Allawah synagogue in Sydney’s south graffitied with swastikas.* January 11: Graffiti and attempted arson at the Newtown synagogue in Sydney’s west.* January 17: Cars torched, and a building formerly owned by a Jewish community leader vandalised in Sydney’s east.* February 12: Two nurses in a Sydney hospital are suspended from work for threatening to kill Jewish patients and refusing to treat them in a video on TikTok.Story continues below this ad* July 4: Twenty worshippers at a Sabbath dinner at the East Melbourne synagogue flee a fire that police describe as arson.ABC News, however, quoted Deakin University Global Islamic Politics Chair Greg Barton as saying Australia was not a “unique” target for Iran.“What benefit is there for this regime in Tehran? I think the answer is that Australia is not unique … they’re doing similar things around the world,” Prof Barton told the ABC Radio National Hour.According to Barton, such attacks were intended to put strain on social cohesion, weaken political trust and deflect anger on antisemitism lines, the ABC News report said.Story continues below this adIntelligence organisations around the world have flagged Iranian state involvement in violent incidents in their jurisdictions targeting Israeli and Jewish interests. British authorities have been reported to be dealing with a large number of alleged Iranian-backed schemes since 2022, and the Swedish Security Service said in May 2024 that “the Iranian regime uses criminal networks in Sweden to carry out violent acts against other states, groups, or individuals in Sweden that Iran regards as threats”.What position has Australia taken on Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza?Australia has long been a staunch Israeli ally, but the government of Prime Minister Albanese has been responding to large-scale public discontent in the country over reports of alleged famine and genocide of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.On August 11, the Australian government announced that it “will recognise the State of Palestine at the 80th Session of the United Nations General Assembly in September, to contribute to international momentum towards a two-state solution, a ceasefire in Gaza and release of the hostages”.Polling this month by DemosAU showed 45% supported Australia recognising a Palestinian state before a negotiated peace deal, with 23% opposed, Reuters reported on August 22. Support was up from 35% a year previously, the report said.Story continues below this adIn a recent editorial, The Sydney Morning Herald noted that public sympathy for Israel in Australia had begun to “rapidly erode once the apocalyptic spectre of famine rode into Gaza”, the Reuters report said.