Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) Director-General Mike Burgess said Iran is responsible for a wave of arsons targeting Jewish businesses in Australia since the Gaza war began, including a Sydney restaurant fire likely coordinated by an Australian living in Iran and acting as an IRGC agent. In the annual threat assessment, Burgess warned that no one has been killed yet, but he fears an Australian will someday be killed on home soil by a foreign government.
Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) Director-General Mike Burgess published the agency's annual threat assessment Thursday morning, directly implicating Iran in a coordinated campaign against Jewish targets in Australia. Burgess stated that a firebombing of a Sydney restaurant was likely orchestrated by an Australian national residing in Iran who operates as an agent of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). In remarks to the media accompanying the assessment, Burgess said Australia faces "multi-dimensional threats" from authoritarian regimes, hackers, and extreme anti-Semitic elements, and warned that the threat environment is deteriorating. He defended ASIO's resource allocation ahead of the Bondi attack, noting that the agency must simultaneously manage a wide range of threats and cannot "simply shift" focus from one threat to another. "We cannot stop every terrorist, just as we cannot catch every spy. But we continue to work around the clock to keep Australians safe," he said.
Burgess assessed that while no one has been killed in the arson campaign so far, the potential for a state-directed fatality on Australian soil is real. The Zioneer has previously reported on a related incident in which Ahmed Al-Ahmed, a man who confronted terrorists in a fatal Sydney attack six months ago, was later charged with domestic violence—underscoring the complex security picture in Australia. The annual threat assessment marks an unusually direct public accusation by a Western intelligence chief of state-directed attacks against Jewish communities.
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