Iranian Subversion: A Systemic Strategy that has Extended to Australia

Introduction

On 26 August, the extraordinary step of expelling the Iranian Ambassador was undertaken by the Australian Government. The Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) uncovered ‘credible evidence’ linking the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to arson attacks against the Jewish community in Melbourne and Sydney. Further attacks are also suspected to have been orchestrated by Iran.

This event is important for several reasons, not least of which is the unprecedented expulsion of an ambassador to Australia in the post-World War II era. First, it will likely lead to an arm of the Iranian government being designated a terrorist organization by the Australian Government. Second, this designation shows that the character of terrorism is shifting with the environment of strategic competition. Third, strategic competition is not a bounded activity.  The Israel-Iran confrontation initiated by the 7 October 2023 attacks, if not before, is now a global dynamic. This has implications for future crises, confrontations, and even conflict. Lastly, Australia is now experiencing a reality that has been faced by its partners in Europe and elsewhere for several years.

Iranian Mechanisms for Proxy Support

The IRGC has a long history of support to terrorist groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas, Ansar Allah (the Houthis), and other proxies over the past forty years. Tehran organized these proxies into an ‘Axis of Resistance’ or the ‘Iranian Threat Network’. Iran provided support to these groups to impose costs upon Israel and to deter aggression against Iran itself.

When the Australian public thinks of terrorism, we generally think of groups like Islamic State or Al Qaeda. Australian security professionals generally do not think about the use of terrorism by a state to advance its strategic interests. Yet, this modus operandi has become part of Iranian policy since at least the US Marine Corps and French paratrooper barracks bombings in Lebanon in 1983. Iran used its proxy in the form of the nascent Hezbollah to punish France and the United States for their support to Saddam’s Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War.

Proxy dynamics have utility in strategic competition by limiting the risk of escalation into open conflict, generally being below the threshold of a conventional military response. Obfuscation of attribution using a range of proxies – mercenaries, non-state armed groups, political parties and civic organizations (fronts), and criminal actors – aids in limiting this risk. Further, proxy support relationships are generally quite cheap by comparison to other military options and can be affected at a global scale.

Proxy dynamics have utility in strategic competition by limiting the risk of escalation into open conflict, generally being below the threshold of a conventional military response.

There is a resultant incentive to compete in peripheries, where the sense of threat may not be as acute. Iran has been operating in the periphery of Europe, using the criminal proxies of the Swedish Foxtrot and Irish Kinahan network to assassinate opponents of the Iranian regime. Iran was also behind the Israeli embassy bombing in Buenos Aires in 1992, the Jewish community center bombing in Buenos Aires in 1994, and a bus bombing in Burgos, Romania in 2012.

Countering Proxy Support to Terrorist Organizations

The threat to Europe precipitated the United Kingdom to initiate a comprehensive review of terrorism legislation to determine if existing counter-terrorism legislation could account for state-sponsored proxy activities, such as those being undertaken by Iran. The Australian Minister for Home Affairs, Tony Burke, intimated a potentially similar amendment to Australia’s criminal code in his comments when the Australian Government’s response to Iranian subversion was announced.  The UK has had a greater impetus to conduct a legislative review due to the threat of Russian-orchestrated terrorism, assassinations, and sabotage across Europe throughout the past few years.

As recognized by Ardavan M. Khoshnood, Iran has demonstrated a consistency over the past forty years in the employment of assassinations and proxy violence, leveraging criminal networks, as a tool of repression against dissident exiles. That much of this history of violence has occurred in Europe and the Americas undoubtedly has contributed to a certain oversight of such methods of competitive statecraft or gray-zone activities within Australian policy.

In the past five years, some 157 cases of Iranian foreign operations involving agents, criminal proxies, and terrorist proxies in Australia have been recorded.

Australia is thus catching up with the present threat that has been faced by its partners. Indeed, in the past five years, some 157 cases of Iranian foreign operations involving agents, criminal proxies, and terrorist proxies have been recorded by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Canada and the United States already designated the IRGC as a terrorist organization due to these activities and its longer history of proxy support to terrorist organizations. Simply put, until now, Australia hasn’t faced a similar level of threat that would warrant punitive actions against Iran.

Australia’s experience with Iranian subversive activities reinforces that strategic competition manifests in many ways. There is a utility in an adversary seeding a divisive ‘wedge’ in his opponent’s camp and undermining a unity of purpose. We have seemingly forgotten that subversion – the weakening of an opponent’s government or political system, often from within – has a strategic utility in competition. Indeed, subversion was liberally used by the Kremlin to fight the Cold War, using ‘active measures’ to weaken the West. Furthermore, today’s technologies are enhancing the ability to effect proxy dynamics: Russia’s GRU is currently using an ‘air-tasker’ model of remotely facilitated arson and vandalism as a component of its sabotage campaign in Europe.

Subversion does not abate in conflict. Indeed, in conflict, subversive measures take on a greater utility as a nation’s armed forces seek to respond to an external threat. Iran’s support to the Iraqi Kurds during the Iran-Iraq War is demonstrative of there being nothing new in such a consideration.

Conclusion

The importance of IRGC’s actions in Australia is to awaken Australian security professionals to this subversive threat, following in the footsteps of its Defense’s recognition of the environment of strategic competition. Australia’s competitors must be expected to use a range of subversive tools to undermine its will to contest their narrative, impose costs (financial, time, materiel, etc.), and isolate it from alliances and partnerships.