The son of a former ambassador from Iran to Australia posted a cryptic threat on X hours before the Islamic terrorist father-and-son team attacked Jewish-Australian celebrants at an iconic beach in New South Wales, Australia. In his tweet, Ahmad Ghadiri Abyaneh, son of former ambassador Mohammad-Hassan Ghadiri Abyaneh, attacked Jews for celebrating a “satanic ritual” by honoring Chanukah. He claimed that these Jewish holiday celebrations required an active defense, quoting Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, who called for “societal defense.”

The most recent ambassador from Iran, Ahmad Sadeghi, was expelled from Australia because of the Iranian embassy’s sponsorship of at least two violent anti-Semitic incidents in Australia. The Australian Intelligence and Security Organization (AISO) had collected sufficient proof that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps personnel assigned as diplomats to the Iranian Embassy had perpetrated Jewish hate crimes. AISO also charged the Iranian Embassy with sponsoring the December 2024 firebombing of the Melbourne-based Adassa Israel Synagogue and the earlier trashing of a Jewish business in Sydney. Three other Iranians at the embassy, presumably men with IRGC connections, were also expelled along with the ambassador on 26 August.

The Labor Party Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, has been accused by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of having ignored past warnings about the growing threat of a Sydney-based cell of Islamic State terrorists, a group that reportedly carried out the attack. Long before this, Israeli and Australian Jewish organizations had warned of the rising tide of antisemitic incidents in Australia as well as the increasingly bold nature of these attacks.

Dani Dayan, the Chairman of Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, warned Australian authorities that “the window is closing” for substantive preventive action before a tragic event takes place. When Dayan met last November with the premiers of Australia’s territories of Victoria and New South Wales (wherein lies Bondi Beach), he underscored the urgency of his warning by suggesting that Australia’s failure to act is normalizing public prejudice and could result in “unspeakable atrocities.”

Another warning came from the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), the parent of about 200 Jewish organizations in Australia. ECAJ Chairman Alex Ryvchin declared to CNN that “the writing was on the wall,” implying that the Bondi mass murder was predictable, given the ongoing surge of anti-Semitic incidents. He further insinuated that the Labor government did not act to implement preventive measures because the governing party judged it “politically costly.”

While it may seem incongruent for Shia Iran to dispose of the IRGC to cooperate with Sunni Islamic State terrorists, Iran has a record of working with opposition violent extremist groups if doing so serves the Islamic Republic of Iran’s objectives. Case in point, Iran reportedly permitted some of the Sunni Islamic terrorists safe passage across Iran on their way to the 9/11 terrorist attack on America. Iran certainly has a motive for seeking revenge, following Israel’s having rolled back its nuclear program by successful ground and air operations inside Iranian territory.

The Bondi Beach mass murder also may have been an IRGC-coordinated payback to Australia following the Sydney national government’s designation of the IRGC as a terrorist entity. Moreover, Australia’s “persona non grata” expulsion (PNG) of Ambassador Sadeghi was highly embarrassing for Tehran. It was the only time since World War II that Australia expelled a foreign ambassador. The episode plummeted bilateral relations with Iran to a historic low.

The toleration of public antisemitic acts in Europe and in the US is certain to invite more Bondi Beach scenarios.

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Col. Lawrence Franklin was the USAF Reserve Military Attaché to the U.S. Embassy in Israel and the U.S. Defense Secretary’s Farsi-speaking Iran Officer and Islamic Terrorism specialist. He holds a Ph.D. in Asian Studies.