Analysis: Australian intelligence now has its work cut out
By Diana Magnay, international correspondent
In August this year, Benjamin Netanyahu sent a furious letter to Anthony Albanese, his Australian counterpart, lashing out at his country's recognition of the state of Palestine at the UN, which he said served to intensify antisemitism in Australia.
"Antisemitism is a cancer that spreads when leaders are silent. You must replace weakness with action," he said at the time.
One week later, Albanese suspended ties with Iran and expelled the Iranian ambassador after Australian intelligence services concluded that Iran's Revolutionary Guards were ultimately behind two antisemitic arson attacks the previous year, one at a cafe in Sydney and the other at a synagogue in Melbourne.
Iran described the allegations as baseless.
What correlation there may have been between Netanyahu's criticisms and Albanese's action against the Iranian regime is unclear.
Australia's national security agency (ASIO) will have taken months to conduct its investigation.
For Israel's leaders though, who say they warned Australia repeatedly of the threat posed by antisemitism, the government's efforts to protect the Jewish community have not been enough.
As the ASIO investigates an act of antisemitic terror on a much larger scale, it will be looking to see whether Iran played a hand in this too - through a "complex web of proxies", which is how the intelligence chief described their involvement back in August.
We won't know those results for some time.
The agency, once again, has its work cut out.
