Eight Australians were at risk over the Iran accusations. A secret plan was put into action

When Anthony Albanese told the nation on Tuesday afternoon that Iran was accused of antisemitic attacks on Australian soil and he was expelling the country’s ambassador, a seemingly small detail was that Australia’s embassy would be shuttered.

By the time the nation heard the shocking revelations, the eight Australians who held the fort in Tehran had already fled the country. Where exactly was to be kept secret.

Six embassy staffers and two dependents were in the Iranian capital of Tehran on Monday when they were told they would be leaving – for the second time in less than three months.

The first was in June, when US B-2 bombers flew a 24-hour mission to drop massive, bunker-busting explosives onto Iranian nuclear sites. Australian embassy officials evacuated overland, heading north into neighbouring Azerbaijan.

This time, the eight Australians headed straight to Tehran’s airport and took the first commercial flight available to a neighbouring country.

The prospect of a return is now much lower.

How the plan unfolded

The federal government’s decision to expel Iranian ambassador Ahmad Sadeghi and his staff from Australia took less than 24 hours to execute.

Moments after ASIO chief Mike Burgess briefed the government’s senior leadership on Monday that Iran was behind at least two antisemitic attacks in Sydney and Melbourne, a meeting of the cabinet’s powerful National Security Committee was convened.

A decision was quickly taken to expel Iranian diplomats, designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organisation and to go public with the news of Iran’s foreign interference.

But before the Australian government could publicly announce the decision, a major obstacle stood in the way – the safety of the embassy staff in Tehran.

The Iranian regime’s record of jailing dissidents, protesters and foreign nationals on trumped-up charges was a particular source of concern. Kylie Moore-Gilbert’s years in prison served as an example of how brutal the regime could be.

Mindful of Iran’s long history of street protests, its current febrile politics, the vicious reach of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and even the occupation of the US embassy in 1979, the federal government wanted all diplomats out of the country and the embassy shuttered before the move was made public.

In June, when US President Donald Trump ordered the strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, embassy officials drove into Azerbaijan. This time, a flight out of Tehran’s airport was considered the best option.

All in the life of a diplomat

The Department of Foreign Affairs will not say which country the diplomats are in, but it’s likely they will remain in the region and keep working, remotely, in much the same way that the Australian diplomats who were booted from Ramallah recently by the Israeli government have relocated to neighbouring Jordan.

And while the rapid exit from Tehran may have set some nerves on edge, Paul Myler, a former Australian ambassador to Russia who runs strategic intelligence firm StratQ, said that diplomatic staff posted to high-risk parts of the world – such as Tehran, or his former post in Moscow – were well prepared.

Embassies have extensive contingency plans that cover everything from natural disasters to civil disturbances to emergency evacuations, and the information is updated every 12 to 18 months.

“DFAT is pretty professional at planning for the worst contingencies, and Tehran has long been one of our most vulnerable posts,” Myler said.

“Particular attention for well over a decade has been paid to ensuring how we get our people out safely.”

Another former Australian ambassador, who asked not to be named so they could speak freely, said that of all Australia’s overseas missions, Tehran has been viewed as one of the riskiest for decades.

“For a long time it has been a post that could at any time turn bad in a way that very few others could, in terms of all of a sudden, for example, the IRGC sending 1000 protesters through the front door,” the second former diplomat said, adding that staff were often hand-picked for difficult postings, and may even undergo psychological testing.

“Iran is one of those countries where you have to smile while sitting opposite someone who has done really quite unpleasant things.”

That second diplomat said it was likely that many of the top-secret files and communications equipment used by the Tehran embassy would have been destroyed in June, to avoid it falling into Iranian hands, when our diplomats fled because of the US bombing.

That, in turn, would probably have meant that shutting down the embassy this time around was a more straightforward job.

But that did not mean that fleeing the Islamic Republic of Iran would have been easy or without risk for the eight Australians.

Right up until the moment the wheels left the tarmac on their commercial flight, the fear of being apprehended and interrogated by Iranian authorities would have been very, very real.

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