Iran on Thursday denounced Australia’s decision to designate the Revolutionary Guards a terror-sponsoring group, as relations between Canberra and Tehran took another downward turn.
In August, Australia blamed the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the ideological wing of Iran’s military, for two 2024 arson attacks targeting its Jewish community and expelled Tehran’s ambassador.
In a statement on Thursday, the Australian government said it was using new legislation passed in the wake of the attacks to designate the Guards a “state sponsor of terrorism”.
The government added: “These cowardly attacks on Australian soil were designed to undermine and sow division in our multicultural society, by targeting Jewish Australians to inflict harm and stoke fear.”
Foreign Minister Penny Wong said “Iran’s attacks were unprecedented and dangerous acts of aggression orchestrated by a foreign nation on Australian soil” and had prompted the listing.
Responding to the designation, Iran’s foreign ministry called it “an insulting and unjustified act” and a “violation of international legal rules and norms related to the national sovereignty of states”.
It also expressed “indignation at the adherence of certain Australian political officials to the harmful policy of the Israeli regime by spreading lies against Iran”.
Relations between the two countries have spiralled in recent months.
After blaming Iran for the arson attacks targeting a kosher restaurant in Sydney and a synagogue in Melbourne, Canberra declared the Iranian ambassador persona non grata and gave him and three other Iranian diplomats a week to leave the country.
It was the first such expulsion by Australia since the Second World War.
Canberra also recalled its own ambassador and suspended the activities of its embassy.
In June, Australia was one of a small number of US allies to explicitly welcome Washington’s bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities during a 12-day war between Israel and Iran.
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