Iran wanted to send a message with its attacks in Australia. It has only shot itself in the foot

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced that ASIO had gathered credible evidence to link Iran to two antisemitic attacks in Sydney and Melbourne. This was extraordinary. For the first time, Canberra accused a foreign state of orchestrating violent acts on Australian soil, underscoring both the seriousness of the threat and justifying the boldness of the response: the expulsion of Iran’s ambassador and the flagging of plans to designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organisation.

While the Iranian ambassador is not directly implicated, he is held responsible for the activities of Iranian agents. At the centre of this story is not Iran’s diplomatic corps but its security arm: the Revolutionary Guard. Unlike Iran’s foreign ministry, which manages state-to-state relations under the constraints of international law and diplomatic protocol, the Revolutionary Guard reports directly to the Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. It is structured to operate outside conventional diplomacy. Its remit includes covert action, surveillance, intimidation of dissidents, support for proxy groups, and deniable operations abroad. These activities are not peripheral to the regime’s strategy; they are central to its logic of ideological confrontation with adversaries and silencing dissent.

ASIO’s revelations are best understood as the local manifestation of a wider pattern seen across Europe. As Iran and Israel exchanged fire in 2024 and 2025 over Iran’s nuclear program, it appears the Revolutionary Guard and Iranian intelligence activated a systematic program of surveillance and intimidation against Israeli targets in the West.

German authorities in 2025 arrested a Danish national allegedly working for Iranian handlers who had been photographing Jewish community sites in Berlin, including the headquarters of the German-Israeli Society. In Sweden, intelligence agencies linked the Foxtrot gang to bombing attempts on the Israeli embassy in Stockholm, carried out on Iran’s behalf. And in London, police arrested Iranian nationals suspected of preparing attacks against Israeli diplomatic sites. In each case, the hallmarks are the same: proxies (not Iranian state employees), symbolic targets, and an operational style that mixes ideological hostility to Israel with criminal outsourcing.

Australia had already seen hints of this playbook. In 2022-23, ASIO disrupted the surveillance of Iranian-Australian dissidents. This surveillance included photographing dissidents’ homes and families. The operations were attributed to Iranian intelligence services, aimed at intimidating activists and silencing voices of solidarity with the massive Woman, Life, Freedom movement that shook the clerical regime to its core. These acts were part of what security experts now call “transnational repression”, where authoritarian regimes project coercion into democracies. By monitoring and intimidating diaspora communities, Tehran aims to fracture opposition networks and instil fear, even among those who thought they had escaped repression by leaving Iran.

Iranian diaspora communities have reported persistent harassment, a pattern that was repeated in Australia, Europe and North America. These are not isolated incidents but part of the Revolutionary Guard’s long-standing toolkit of transnational repression, deployed to protect the regime by spreading fear among those who challenge it.

The logic of silencing dissent and attacking Israel governs the latest episode. The Revolutionary Guard is sending a message that nowhere is safe for Israel and its supporters and, in the process, conflates Judaism (which is about communal identity of faith) with Zionism (a political project for an exclusive homeland for the Jews).

In the Revolutionary Guard’s calculations, such attacks generate leverage: nuisance value against adversaries, a demonstration of reach, and a way to pressure foreign governments without resorting to open conflict. And by keeping diplomats formally out of the chain of command, Tehran generates an illusion of plausible deniability.

Yet, the Albanese government has demonstrated that Australia cannot be deceived. For Canberra, designating the Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organisation would reflect similar steps by allies such as the United States and Canada, while giving Australian agencies sharper legal tools to disrupt Revolutionary Guard-linked financing and logistics.

This episode is a major setback for bilateral relations between Australia and Iran, and a major embarrassment for Tehran. The Revolutionary Guard’s behaviour has clearly hurt Iran’s diplomatic agenda to come out of international isolation. In fact, this is a window into Iranian polity. It has revealed the internal tension between technocrats in the foreign ministry and the ideologically driven faction in the Revolutionary Guard. The latter persistently undermines the former with impunity because the Revolutionary Guard has a direct line of communication with the Supreme Leader.

The Revolutionary Guard has created a paradox. It seeks to project strength while eroding Iran’s diplomatic credibility. This leaves Iran internationally isolated at precisely the moment it can least afford it, as European powers and the United States deliberate next steps in relation to Iran’s nuclear program.

Professor Shahram Akbarzadeh is Director of Middle East Studies Forum at Deakin University, and Non-resident senior fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs (Doha).

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