Is Australia at war with Iran? The fine line between ‘defensive operations’ and complicity

While its weapons, materiel and personnel are on their way to the conflict, Australia finds itself part of a coalition of the reticent, insisting its role is purely defensive

Above the streets of Tehran, the weapons bay of an F-35 fighter jet opens and a missile streaks groundward, raining death and destruction on the city below.

The mechanism that allows the jet to rapidly open its bay doors and fire is made in only one place in the world: a factory in suburban Melbourne. More than 700 of the fighter jet’s “critical pieces” are manufactured in Victoria alone.

An Iranian frigate is sailing south of Sri Lanka when it is struck by a torpedo, fired from a US nuclear submarine. The Iranian warship sinks, more than 100 people are killed. Onboard the US submarine are three Australians, members of its crew.

US forces identify military targets hidden in the vast anonymity of Iran’s deserts. Its targeting information has come from “Advanced Orion” satellites in geosynchronous orbit above the Middle East – downloaded through the joint Australian-US Pine Gap intelligence surveillance base, in the red dirt of the Northern Territory.

Pine Gap ‘working overtime’

Australia was always part of this war, numerous sources approached by the Guardian to discuss the worsening conflict across the Middle East have said.

Despite the government’s claims of “defensive operations” and “support of collective self-defence”, Australia is at war, Dr Richard Tanter, senior research associate at the Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability, told the Guardian.

“We are complicit,” he argued, “most importantly through the intelligence facilities”.

“Pine Gap signals intelligence will have been working overtime, and for some time beforehand, providing the US air force – and as we know, then the Israel Defense Forces – with absolutely critical targeting intelligence,” he said.

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For years, Australia has consciously sought to enmesh itself more and more deeply, more and more intensively, in the American war-fighting machine, Tanter said.

When the US and Israel launched airstrikes on Tehran on 28 February, Australia, through its weapons production, its alliances, its training programs, found itself already – however unwittingly – involved.

That the Iranian regime is violent and abhorrent, repressive of its people and an exporter of terrorism to peoples the world over is not contested. But the American-Israeli war that killed the Islamic Republic’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, only to see him replaced by his son Mojtaba Khamenei, is Australia’s war too, international legal experts argue.

Iran appears not to have hesitated to attack Australia previously: its malevolent Revolutionary Guards Corps is alleged to have been behind antisemitic attacks in Melbourne and Sydney.

But the US-led strikes on Iran have sparked a massive regional conflagration, one without an apparent exit strategy, one rapidly spiralling out of control. It is a war which has drawn in nations from around the world. Geographic distance does not insulate Australia. Australian weapons, materiel and personnel are on their way now to the conflict.

Like the UK, like France, Australia finds itself part of a coalition of the reticent, with the Labor government insisting Australia’s role is purely defensive.

“My government has been clear that we’re not taking offensive action against Iran, and we’ve been clear that we are not deploying Australian troops on the ground in Iran,” the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has said.

“Deployed ADF assets will operate according to the right of collective self-defence.”

Australia has not formally “declared war” since the second world war. War powers rest with the executive – the prime minister and cabinet – and there is no legislative requirement to declare war. The government is invoking Article 51 of the UN Charter in its response: the right of collective self-defence.

Albanese said Australia was taking defensive action to support regional partners and keep Australian citizens in the region safe. About 115,000 Australian citizens and permanent residents are in the Middle East, including about 24,000 in the United Arab Emirates.

But the line the government has sought to draw between “defensive” and “offensive” operations in times of war was a distinction without a difference, Tanter argued, labelling the rationales offered by the prime minister and foreign minister “misleading and obfuscatory”.

Australians onboard the US nuclear submarine – training as part of the Aukus agreement – “were there as part of the crew” and “contributing to the functionality of a vessel under US command that arguably committed a major war crime”, he said.

US alliance ‘critical’

Australia’s security alliance with the US has been an ever-present factor.

The government’s very first statement, issued just hours after the initial strikes on Tehran, read: “We support the United States acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and to prevent Iran continuing to threaten international peace and security.”

“Our historic alliance with the United States, of course, is critical,” Albanese said in a later interview.

Retired Army Major Cameron Leckie served 24 years in the Australian military. He is now spokesperson for the Independent and Peaceful Australia Network, and told the Guardian he believed Australia’s commitment was an act of “strategic folly” designed to appease the US.

“This commitment – as virtually all of our military commitments over recent decades have been – is all about our alliance commitments and how we’re perceived by the United States, and other countries such as Israel,” he said.

“This sort of deployment is too small to make any significant difference to the outcome of the conflict. However, it ties us in as being a co-belligerent.”

Leckie said he believed Australia would likely be called upon to expand its role in the war: “that this initial deployment will be the thin end of the wedge”.

“We’re dragging ourselves into a hell of a mess,” he said.

Leckie argued the Australian government was ignoring the lessons of previous wars, such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Attacking Iran is not a path to peace or stability, but a recipe for a wider regional conflict,” he said.

Greens senator and defence spokesperson David Shoebridge argued Australia was caught between a desire to demonstrate fealty to an increasingly bellicose US, and its disquiet at what some international law scholars, former diplomats and former intelligence officials say is an illegal war. The prime minister and foreign minister have repeatedly declined to comment on the legality of the US-Israeli strikes, saying their legal justification is a matter for those countries.

Shoebridge told the Guardian: “Australia is joining this conflict not to protect Australia’s national interest but to protect the US national interest.

“The problem with the security and defence establishment in Canberra is that they are so enmeshed with Washington that they can’t tell the difference.

“Trump wants us to be part of his war, and he wants the Australian military in the UAE to free up US assets to bomb Iran, and Albanese has complied,” he said.

Military support for UAE

In the wake of US and Israeli attacks on Iran, beginning on 28 February, several Gulf states have been attacked in retaliation by the regime.

A number of those states have asked for Australia’s assistance.

Australia has chosen to dedicate its military support to the United Arab Emirates alone.

The government said “at the request of the UAE”, Australia would provide an E-7A Wedgetail – a military surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft – to the Gulf “to help protect and defend Australians and other civilians”. Eighty-five service members will be deployed with the aircraft.

Australia will also provide advanced medium range air-to-air missiles – so-called AMRAAMs – to the UAE.

The UAE is not an Australian ally, though the Albanese government did sign with it a “strategic partnership” last year. It is an authoritarian regime that has never held a free election and 90% of its population are non-citizens with no political rights.

But the UAE is, by far, Australia’s biggest weapons export market, with nearly $300m in arms and ammunition being shipped there in the past five years.

The UAE’s military is alleged to have funnelled “sophisticated weaponry” to Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces paramilitary, accused of using those weapons to slaughter non-Arab Sudanese. The UAE denies all allegations of arming belligerents in Sudan, insisting its cargo flights into the country were humanitarian missions.

Shoebridge argued the UAE was an undemocratic state, with an appalling human rights record: “so why on Earth would Australia be sending troops there?

“This is not a war about democracy or freedom, those claims were always a lie, just like the lies that lead to the Iraq war.

“Make no mistake, the Australian government is not helping a friend here, they are delivering for Trump and protecting a customer for Australian arms sales.”