Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has accused Iran of directing at least two anti-Jewish attacks in his country and announced plans to expel Iran’s ambassador in Canberra.

Speaking to reporters in the Australian capital on Tuesday, Albanese described the attacks, which took place in Sydney and Melbourne last year, as “extraordinary and dangerous acts of aggression orchestrated by a foreign nation” to undermine social cohesion in Australia.

“It is totally unacceptable, and the Australian government is taking strong and decisive action,” he said.

“A short time ago, we informed the Iranian ambassador to Australia that he will be expelled.”

Albanese said Australia has also suspended operations at its embassy in the Iranian capital, Tehran, and relocated all its diplomats to a third country.

“I can also announce the government will legislate to list Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, the IRGC, as a terrorist organisation,” he added.

The attacks took place at the Lewis Continental Kitchen in Sydney on October 10 and the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne on December 6 last year, according to Australian officials. There were no casualties in either of the attacks, but in both incidents, assailants set fire to the properties, causing extensive damage.

Penny Wong, the Australian foreign minister, said Iran’s ambassador, Ahmad Sadeghi, and three of his colleagues have been declared persona non grata and given seven days to leave the country. She said the move marked the first time that Australia has expelled an ambassador since World War II and that the country has also withdrawn its envoy to Tehran.

Still, the Albanese government will maintain some diplomatic lines with Iran to advance Canberra’s interests, Wong said, advising Australians in the Middle Eastern country to return home. She also warned Australians considering travelling to Iran to refrain from doing so.

There was no immediate comment from Iran.

Australia-Israel spat

Mike Burgess, the head of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), speaking alongside Albanese, said Iranian diplomats in Canberra were not involved in the attacks, but his agency’s findings show the IRGC was “directing, through a series of cut-outs, people in Australia to undertake these crimes”.

He said the IRGC, a branch of the Iranian military that plays a central role in the country’s defence and regional operations, had used a “complex web of proxies” to hide its involvement.

ASIO is now investigating possible IRGC involvement in other anti-Jewish attacks since Israel’s war on Gaza began in October 2023, Burgess said, but stressed that he does not believe Iran was involved in all of those incidents.

Australia’s moves against Iran also come as the country’s ties with Israel plummet over its criticism of Israeli-made famine and war in Gaza, as well as its decision to join France, the United Kingdom and Canada in recognising a Palestinian state at the United Nations General Assembly in September.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Albanese last week a “weak politician who betrayed Israel and abandoned Australia’s Jews”.

The Australian government has hit back at Netanyahu, with Minister for Home Affairs Tony Burke saying that strength was not measured “by how many people you can blow up or how many children you can leave hungry”.

Australia has also cancelled a visa for Simcha Rothman, a lawmaker with Israel’s far-right Mafdal-Religious Zionism party and a member of Netanyahu’s governing coalition, amid concerns that a planned speaking tour in the country aimed to “spread division”. Israel responded by revoking the visas of Australian diplomats to the Palestinian Authority.

Mark Kenny, the director of the Australian Studies Institute at the Australian National University in Canberra, told Al Jazeera that Albanese’s moves against Iran may partly have been motivated by a desire to appear tough on tackling anti-Jewish sentiment in the country.

He said Netanyahu’s rhetoric “has put pressure on the government here, because there is a strong Jewish community in Australia”.

“I think there is an element here of the government wanting to appear strong and decisive, but I wouldn’t want to underplay the significance of the intelligence. If that intelligence is right, then the fact of a state actor orchestrating what are effectively terrorist attacks in Australia is a very serious matter, and any government is going to respond forthrightly to that,” Kenny said.

The analyst said Australia’s moves against Iran, including against the IRGC, will help curb any Iranian activities in the country.

“Nominating this body as a terrorist organisation brings it up the priority list and makes it more front of mind,” Kenny said. “Expelling the diplomats and effectively truncating relations between the two countries would make it much harder for the Iranian actors to undertake any activity without being detected.”