Published by the Atlantic
Australia is not known for picking fights. It prioritizes trade and has diplomatic relations with almost every country in the world—even the reclusive North Korea. But on Tuesday, it did something it hadn’t done since World War II: It expelled an ambassador.
Shutting down the Iranian embassy, the Australian government declared Ambassador Ahmad Sadeghi persona non grata and ordered him and three other Iranian officials to leave within three days. Additionally, it designated Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps as a terrorist organization.
The decisiveness of Canberra’s actions is a measure of the extremity of Iran’s behavior. According to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Australian security forces have “credible intelligence” linking Iran to several attacks on Australian Jews last year. Iran is specifically accused of organizing an act of arson on a kosher restaurant in Sydney last October and another on the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne in December.
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