On Aug. 26, Australian intelligence confirmed what security professionals have long suspected: Iran orchestrated the firebombing of Lewis’ Continental Kitchen in Sydney on Oct. 20, 2024, and the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne on Dec. 6, 2024. This represents the first confirmed Iranian state-directed attacks on Australian soil, marking a strategic escalation that threatens every Western democracy hosting significant Jewish populations.
Iran believes that it can conduct terror operations against Diaspora Jewish communities with manageable consequences.
The Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO)’s assessment that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) directed these attacks through local proxies should trigger immediate reassessment in Washington. The IRGC has now demonstrated willingness to strike inside a Five Eyes partner nation, eroding the deterrent effect of Western intelligence cooperation. Australia expelled four Iranian diplomats and suspended Tehran embassy operations, but the precedent is set: Iran believes that it can conduct terror operations against Diaspora Jewish communities with manageable consequences.
The operational pattern matches what has been tracked for three decades. The IRGC’s Unit 840 executed the Buenos Aires AMIA Jewish community center bombing that killed 85 people (and wounded hundreds) on July 18, 1994, and the Israeli embassy attack that killed 29 people on March 17, 1992. The unit attempted bombings in Bangkok targeting Israeli diplomats on Feb. 14, 2012, plotted against Israeli businessmen in Cyprus in September 2021 and security personnel in London in May 2025. Each operation followed the same template: extended reconnaissance, local recruitment, technical support via encrypted channels and state deniability through proxy execution.
What makes Australia different is the timing.
Iran’s FY2024 budget documents show $500 million allocated annually to IRGC-Quds Force foreign operations, maintaining networks in more than 40 countries. But Tehran historically avoided direct operations in Five Eyes nations, calculating that the intelligence and diplomatic costs outweighed tactical gains. The Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, changed this calculation. With Western attention focused on Gaza and political divisions over Israel policy, Iran identified a window to test new red lines.
The implications for American security are immediate.
The United States hosts 7.6 million Jews, the world’s largest Jewish population outside Israel. Iranian networks operate through cultural centers in Los Angeles, student associations at major North American universities and money-exchange networks that the OFAC has struggled to map comprehensively. If Australia’s response appears weak, these dormant cells will activate. The IRGC learned from Buenos Aires that patient network-building over eight years—as Mohsen Rabbani demonstrated before the AMIA bombing—can yield strategic dividends.
The IRGC learned from Buenos Aires that patient network-building over eight years can yield strategic dividends.
Australia’s announcement to designate the IRGC as a terrorist organization follows the same designation by Canada on June 19, 2024, but highlights American policy failure. The Trump administration restored a “maximum pressure” campaign through February 2025 sanctions and conducted military strikes on June 21, 2025, targeting Iranian nuclear facilities. Yet it maintains only partial designations of IRGC subsidiaries, creating legal gaps that Iran exploits. Full designation under Executive Order 13224 would trigger comprehensive asset freezes; criminalize material support under 18 U.S.C. § 2339B; and enable civil suits by victims under the terrorism exception to sovereign immunity.
Critics argue designation closes diplomatic channels needed for nuclear negotiations. This fundamentally misreads Iranian strategy. Tehran compartmentalizes nuclear diplomacy from terror operations, using the former to shield the latter. Canada’s IRGC designation didn’t prevent continued P5+1 engagement through Swiss intermediaries. The choice isn’t between diplomacy and security, but between accepting normalized terror operations and imposing real costs.
Washington must lead a coordinated Western response. The U.S. Treasury Department should direct a comprehensive IRGC designation by Dec. 31, synchronized with the United Kingdom, European Union and the remaining Five Eyes partners to prevent asset flight. The FBI should establish a joint task force with ASIO, MI5, CSIS and NZSIS specifically targeting Unit 840 operations, sharing real-time intelligence on recruitment, financing and operational planning.
Congress should mandate disclosure of all Iranian institutional partnerships and funding above $10,000 at universities receiving federal funds, closing the academic infiltration pathway. OFAC must map and freeze the estimated $2.3 billion in IRGC-linked assets transiting Western financial systems annually, using Australia’s AUSTRAC identification of 47 suspicious exchange networks as the starting template.
The Nonprofit Security Grant Program requires immediate expansion from $274.5 million to $1 billion annually, with streamlined applications for Jewish institutions. Every synagogue, Jewish school and community center needs professional security assessments and hardening before Iran activates cells in Chicago, Los Angeles or Miami.
The question isn’t whether Tehran will strike American Jewish communities but when—and whether security forces will be ready.
The Sydney kosher butcher shop and Melbourne synagogue weren’t endpoints but test runs. Iran is calibrating Western tolerance for violence against Jews, calculating how many attacks fall below the threshold triggering military response. Australia’s diplomatic expulsions are necessary but insufficient.
Without comprehensive economic warfare against IRGC assets and networks, Iran will read Western response as an acceptable cost of business. The question isn’t whether Tehran will strike American Jewish communities but when—and whether security forces will be ready when Mohsen Rabbani’s successors complete their reconnaissance phase in American cities.
Published originally on August 27, 2025, under the title “Iran’s Sydney-Melbourne Axis: How the IRGC Turned Australian Streets Into Its Terror Laboratory.”
