In the first days of the US-Israeli attack on Iran, few governments were as enthusiastic as Australia’s. Anthony Albanese’s ALP virtually cut and pasted the lies used by George W. Bush and John Howard at the start of the 2003 Iraq war: Iran was on the cusp of developing nuclear weapons; its ballistic missile program and international proxies represented a threat to international peace and security; and a war would liberate “the brave people of Iran in their struggle against oppression”. So, it was “bombs away” with Donald Trump and US Central Command. Not even the US killing of 175 Iranian schoolchildren and teachers on the first day of the war cooled the government’s appetite for action.
The Guardian reports that some “left faction” Labor MPs had been “quietly alarmed” and were “confounded” by the government’s immediate readiness to back the illegal invasion. But any idea that they might fight was soon scotched: “the Labor caucus quickly fell into line behind the prime minister”. It probably helped that the PM, foreign minister and defence industry minister, all nominally from the party’s left, led the charge.
Only once it became clear that the Iranian regime was not about to crumble, only when Iranian armed forces demonstrated their ability to strike back and only when Iran’s shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz blocked energy exports to the world, did the Albanese government begin to back away from its open support for the war.
Starting in mid-March, the government began to emphasise “de-escalation”. Now it began to preach the need for “all parties” to observe “international humanitarian law”. Now it began to express its “concern” at the state of things. This wasn’t primarily concern about the thousands of Iranians and Lebanese murdered by US and Israeli bombs, mind you. Nor was it concern about unbridled aggression by two of its most important allies. No, what mattered to the Albanese government was the disruptions to the world economy. The government is now hoping the ceasefire holds so that, as Foreign Minister Penny Wong put it, “Australians and the world can see lower prices for fuel”.
Although the messaging has changed, you will look high and low for any admission that responsibility for this disaster lies squarely at the feet of the US and Israel. The Albanese government attacked Russia for breaching the so-called international rules-based order when it invaded Ukraine, but brushes that aside when it comes to the US-Israeli illegal invasion of Iran. Here, Albanese and Wong told us, “the legal basis for the attack is a matter for the US and Israel”. No surprise coming from a government that has backed Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
The government condemns Iran for closing the Strait of Hormuz as if this were simply an act of bastardry by Tehran, rather than a response to the invasion. Nor does it state the obvious: that if the US and Israel stopped attacking Iran and Lebanon, there would be little motive for Iran to use its leverage in this way.
In calling for “all parties to uphold international humanitarian law and protect civilian life”, as Wong now does, the government tries to obscure the fact that Israel and the US are responsible for by far the majority of civilian deaths, nearly 4,000 in Iran and Lebanon, including more than 300 slaughtered in Lebanon just hours after a ceasefire had been declared. (Iran is responsible for 41 civilian deaths in the Gulf and 27 in Israel.)
Wong admits that the Israeli military killed Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom and six of her colleagues in Gaza in 2024. But two years later, all she can do is issue a lame press release calling for “transparency” in Israel’s “investigation” into the matter, as though the killing was an isolated criminal act, rather than an inevitable feature of a genocidal war.
The foreign minister calls for action to protect the lives of humanitarian aid workers in Lebanon, but fails to mention that Israel, and Israel alone, has killed 40 and injured 100 health workers in air strikes on ambulances, civil defence centres and medical clinics. Wong says she is “gravely concerned” at “the expansion of the conflict into Lebanon” but lays the blame on Hezbollah despite Israel attacking Lebanon long before Hezbollah joined Iran in March.
And when Donald Trump threatens to send the Iranian people “back to the Stone Age, where they belong” and to end civilisation in Iran “never to be brought back again”, it is only after Nationals leader Matt Canavan denounces this Hitlerian rhetoric and only after a ceasefire is announced that Albanese can bring himself to declare these barbaric statements “inappropriate”. No, prime minister, that will not do. “Inappropriate” is turning up to a wedding wearing black, not threatening civilisational extinction.
The Australian government simply cannot tell the truth about this war because—despite its constant avowals that it is only playing a defensive role, its insistence that it will not send “boots on the ground” and its calls for “de-escalation”—it is complicit. Australia’s complicity is not just government statements supporting the invasion and denouncing Iran. It is the intelligence gathered by the Pine Gap spy base that Australia shares with the US Central Command and Israel. This intelligence is an essential element of US military capabilities, without which the US and Israel would fly blind.
Australia’s complicity takes the form of the three Australian crew serving on board the US Navy submarine that sank the unarmed Iranian frigate, drowning 100 Iranian sailors, last month. Complicity involves dozens of other Australian submariners embedded in the US Navy as part of the AUKUS nuclear submarine project, the 100 military and intelligence personnel stationed at US bases in the Gulf and the deployment last month of 90 SAS personnel to the US Al Minhad air base in the United Arab Emirates. What else is Australia’s supply of components to Israel’s fighter jets if not involvement in this war?
Complicity is the Australian government sending missiles and an E-7A Wedgetail battle management surveillance aircraft, along with 85 airmen and support crew, to the UAE to support US war aims in the Gulf. Initially, the Wedgetail deployment was for one month; that has now been extended indefinitely.
There are limits to Australia’s support. Aware of the unpopularity of the war, its fear that deeper involvement might lead it into a quagmire like Iraq and Afghanistan and its focus on containing China’s rise in the Asia-Pacific, the Australian government has said from the outset that it won’t put boots on the ground in Iran. However, it is certainly considering putting a Royal Australian Navy ship in the Gulf as part of a European mission to challenge Iranian control of the Strait of Hormuz.
But if the government were really concerned about the rising death toll and destruction resulting from the war, it would take steps to stop it by immediately pulling back every bit of Australian support for the US and Israeli war machine, whether military intelligence, basing and port facilities, personnel, hardware or critical minerals. It would condemn the US and Israeli attack and press war crimes charges against senior figures in the US and Israeli administrations. It would sanction Israel for its crimes in Gaza. It would scrap the AUKUS nuclear submarine deal.
There is a precedent for this. In 1985, the New Zealand government banned visits from US nuclear-armed and nuclear-powered vessels, leading the US government to effectively end military cooperation between the two countries.
Nonetheless, it is almost impossible to envision any Australian government doing this. The Australian ruling class is complicit in US and Israeli wars because it remains committed to US power in the Middle East and beyond. This is not because it is merely a lackey of the US, but because it regards US domination as a guarantor of Australian power in the Asia-Pacific. As Defence Minister Richard Marles argued in 2023, the Australia-US alliance
“affords Australia capability, technology and intelligence advantages we simply could not acquire or develop on our own. This expands our strategic options, makes us less vulnerable to coercive action, and enables Australia to pursue our national security interests far beyond what we could achieve alone”.
The alliance is not subservience but a force multiplier for Australian imperialism. This is why the ruling class regards support for the alliance as a prerequisite for any party with ambitions to govern and why every major party supports US imperialism.
When Albanese was asked about whether his mealy mouthed “concern” for the effects of the war might open a rift with the White House, the prime minister told the ABC “Not at all. We have a very constructive relationship, personally, myself and President Trump”, while Marles said that the alliance “is enduring and as important today as it’s ever been”.
The task of all those who oppose US and Israeli barbaric wars is to end Australia’s integration into the US military. That is not because an independent Australian military would be inherently better; it would not. As its record shows, Australia, with the fourth most powerful military in the Asia-Pacific, is quite capable of carrying out war crimes in its own name; there would be nothing progressive about Australian armed forces “going it alone”.
But the world would be a safer place if the Australia-US alliance were broken. Detaching one of the US’s most reliable allies would weaken the US’s ability to rampage around the world. And undermining the Australian armed forces’ strike capacity would weaken Australian militarism in our own region as well.
