Trump administration applauds Australia’s decision to expel Iranian ambassador

London: The Trump administration has backed Australia in its dramatic move to name Iran as the instigator of criminal attacks on Jewish sites in Sydney and Melbourne, as Iranian officials threaten retaliation for being blamed for terrorism.

The White House applauded the Albanese government for revealing Iran’s role in the attacks and expelling the Iranian ambassador, as experts warned the two incidents were signs of a growing threat to western democracies.

“The Trump administration applauds this action by the Australian government,” said a senior administration official.

“State-sponsored antisemitic violence must never be tolerated.”

The support from US President Donald Trump’s administration came in a statement to this masthead shortly before Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles revealed that he had met US Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth in Washington.

“The Alliance between Australia and the United States is longstanding, built on our shared history of deep collaboration,” Marles posted on social media on Wednesday at 4:45am, AEST. He did not say whether or nor he had discussed Iran with the US leaders.

Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi rejected the accusations and signalled retribution for Australia after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese ordered the Iranian ambassador, Ahmad Sadeghi, to leave the country.

Araghchi aimed a personal attack at Albanese by borrowing a line from one of Iran’s greatest enemies, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who rebuked Albanese for being “weak” on Palestine.

“I am not in the habit of joining causes with wanted war criminals, but Netanyahu is right about one thing: Australia’s PM is indeed a ‘weak politician’,” Araghchi said.

He claimed Iran did its “utmost” to protect Jewish people in its own country and that it therefore made “zero sense” for attack Jewish sites in Australia.

“Iran is paying the price for the Australian people’s support for Palestine. Canberra should know better than to attempt to appease a regime led by War Criminals. Doing so will only embolden Netanyahu and his ilk,” he wrote on social media.

ASIO director-general Mike Burgess said on Tuesday that the security service had evidence showing the Iranian government directed at least two attacks – on the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne and Lewis’ Continental Kitchen at Bondi in Sydney – and was likely involved in others.

The security agency traced the links between the incidents and commanders in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, blamed for terrorism by several countries. Australia will move to designate the IRGC as a terrorist organisation.

Albanese said on the ABC’s 7:30 program on Tuesday night that the security authority knew of an intermediary between Iran and the alleged criminals who conducted the attacks.

“We’re aware of at least one Sydney individual who’s an intermediate [sic],” he said. He declined to elaborate.

Sadeghi, the expelled ambassador, retweeted Araghchi’s post about Albanese on X but made no comment himself.

An Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Esmaeil Baghaei, rejected the Australian accusations during a press conference in Tehran, Agence France-Presse reported.

“Any inappropriate and unjustified action on a diplomatic level will have a reciprocal reaction,” he said.

Baghaei suggested the move to expel the ambassador was influenced by domestic politics in Australia because the government wanted to compensate for the criticism it had recently received from Israel.

Experts warned that Iran could resort to more “indirect attacks” on Western democracies when its direct military power has been degraded by Israel and the US over the past year.

“As Iran braces for further rounds of conflict with Israel, it will seek ways to control the escalatory path,” said Dr Burcu Ozcelik, a senior research fellow for Middle East and North Africa security at the Royal United Services Institute, a leading UK think tank.

“Regime operatives may deploy asymmetric warfare tactics like cyberattacks, assassination attempts or other subversive means to ‘export’ the resistance against Israel,” Ozcelik said.

“The goal is to destabilise, distract and disrupt Western capitals while evading direct responsibility for its actions.”

Ozcelik noted that the British parliament’s intelligence and security committee warned in July about the threat from Iranian espionage operations against dissidents and Jewish targets in Britain.

Thomas Juneau, an associate fellow with international affairs think tank Chatham House in London and a professor at the University of Ottawa, said the severe military setbacks for Iran and its partners, such as Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, might lead to change in approach.

“One interpretation suggests that it is plausible that Tehran, keen to avoid renewed open and direct military confrontation with Israel and the United States, will choose to focus even more in the future on such indirect attacks,” he said.

This could lead to more use of “asymmetric tactics” such as terrorist attacks, cyber warfare, acts of subversion and disinformation campaigns.

The Australian government has not signalled any sanctions on individuals involved in the Sydney and Melbourne attacks, such as members of the IRGC, amid doubts about whether this would be effective.

Juneau said sanctions were unlikely to deter attacks.

“Individual sanctions by small or medium-sized countries such as Australia, on their own, have little to no impact on Iran’s decision-making,” he said.

“That does not mean that they are useless, however; it is their cumulative impact, by multiple countries over time, that matters.”

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