Australia Expels Iranian Diplomats After Synagogue Arsons, Points to Organized Crime Proxies

ASIO says Iran’s Revolutionary Guard paid offshore gangs to torch Jewish sites — a method that raises questions on firebombings targeting Canadian communities.

Canberra — In a rare public intelligence disclosure with major geopolitical consequence, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess revealed today that formally assessed intelligence confirms Iran orchestrated at least two antisemitic arson attacks on Australian soil, paying transnational organized crime proxies to carry out the intelligence operation in a pattern now recognized in North America.

At a Canberra press conference, the spy agency’s director-general, Burgess, said Melbourne’s Adass Israel Synagogue attack in December 2024 and Sydney’s Lewis’ Continental Kitchen attack last October were ordered by Iran and that investigators believe the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was behind the operation. In addition to immediately expelling Iranian diplomats, Albanese’s government will table legislation to designate the IRGC a terrorist entity.

“ASIO assesses it is likely Iran directed further attacks as well,” Albanese said. “A short time ago we informed the Iranian ambassador to Australia that he would be expelled. We have suspended operations at our embassy in Tehran, and all our diplomats are now safe, in a third country.”

The IRGC, which Western intelligence agencies say employs transnational gangs as proxies in intelligence and targeting operations that can include murder, has a significant footprint in Canada.

“They 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,” Burgess said of the arson attacks on Australian Jews.

Burgess added that the IRGC directed the attacks through a series of “cut-outs” or third parties, and that some perpetrators were paid, while no diplomats or embassy staff were directly involved. “It’s a layer cake of cut-outs between IRGC and … the alleged perpetrators conducting crimes. In between them, they tap into a number of people, agents of IRGC, and people that they know in the criminal world, and work through there,” he said, clarifying that “offshore organised crime” was involved but he did not believe any Australian gangs were.

In Canada, a prominent case has already revealed parallels. A Vancouver-based Hells Angel associated with the Wolfpack Alliance—a hybrid fentanyl-producing and distributing Canadian crime network with ties to Iranian operatives, Mexican cartels and Chinese actors—was allegedly tasked by Iranian intelligence entities in a murder plot targeting an Iranian dissident in the United States.

Jewish communities in Canadian urban centers such as Montreal and Toronto have also been under increasingly aggressive attack over the past two years—spanning arson attempts, gunfire, vandalism, and threats that mirror the patterns seen in Australia. Canada formally listed the IRGC as a terrorist organization in June 2024 and raised the prospect of investigating reports of hundreds of senior Iranian officials residing in the country. Experts in the Iranian-Canadian community have argued, however, that these networks are already deeply embedded and that the Liberal government delayed too long in acting, despite sustained pressure from the Conservative opposition and the U.S. decision to list the IRGC in 2019.

The surge in antisemitic incidents and violent episodes across Canada strongly suggests that the networks flagged by Australian intelligence could be similarly active. Verified incidents that resemble the Australian attacks include:

– Montreal’s Congregation Beth Tikvah was struck by a suspected firebomb attack in November 2023, followed by another incendiary assault in December. A nearby Jewish office building was also vandalized during the December incident.
– Toronto’s Jewish schools, notably Bais Chaya Mushka Girls Elementary School, were targeted in three separate shooting incidents in 2024—May, October (on Yom Kippur), and December—causing widespread community alarm though no injuries were reported.
– Synagogues and institutions in Vancouver and Ontario have also faced deliberate arson or property attacks, including Vancouver’s Schara Tzedeck synagogue and Beth Tefila in Ontario.

B’nai Brith Canada recorded a steep rise in antisemitic incidents post–October 7, 2023, with 5,791 cases in 2023 and 6,219 in 2024—the highest since monitoring began.