Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at Australia accusing Iran of orchestrating antisemitic attacks, France’s looming no-confidence vote, and mass flooding in Pakistan.
‘Acts of Aggression’
Australia severed diplomatic ties with Iran on Tuesday after Canberra’s spy agency found that Tehran had orchestrated at least two antisemitic attacks in the country. According to the Australian Security Intelligence Organization, the Iranian government backed an arson attack on the Lewis Continental Kitchen, a kosher food company in Sydney, in October 2024 and one on Melbourne’s Adass Israel Synagogue two months later. The latter attack injured one congregant.
Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at Australia accusing Iran of orchestrating antisemitic attacks, France’s looming no-confidence vote, and mass flooding in Pakistan.
‘Acts of Aggression’
Australia severed diplomatic ties with Iran on Tuesday after Canberra’s spy agency found that Tehran had orchestrated at least two antisemitic attacks in the country. According to the Australian Security Intelligence Organization, the Iranian government backed an arson attack on the Lewis Continental Kitchen, a kosher food company in Sydney, in October 2024 and one on Melbourne’s Adass Israel Synagogue two months later. The latter attack injured one congregant.
“These were extraordinary and dangerous acts of aggression orchestrated by a foreign nation on Australian soil,” Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said. “They were attempts to undermine social cohesion and sow discord in our community. It is totally unacceptable.”
Australia’s spy agency concluded that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) directed people in the country to commit these crimes, “including people who are criminals and members of organized crime gangs to do their bidding or direct their bidding,” said agency chief Mike Burgess. Police have already arrested at least one suspect tied to the Sydney fire and two individuals accused of torching the Melbourne temple.
In response to the spy agency’s findings, Albanese ordered the expulsion of Iranian Ambassador to Australia Ahmad Sadeghi within the next seven days. This is the first time that Canberra has expelled an ambassador since World War II. In addition, Albanese closed the Australian Embassy in Tehran and withdrew Australian diplomats posted in the country as well as urged all Australian citizens in Iran to “strongly consider leaving as soon as possible, if it is safe to do so,” warning that they are “at a high risk of arbitrary detention or arrest.” Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong has said that Canberra plans to keep some diplomatic channels open to advance Australia’s interests in the country.
Albanese also said he plans to push for legislation that would designate the IRGC as a terrorist organization. Canberra has previously resisted calls to do so because of the IRGC’s role as a government entity. However, several of Australia’s allies have already deemed the IRGC a terrorist group, including the United States and Canada.
Iran denied Australia’s allegations, with Tehran’s Foreign Ministry saying that antisemitism has no place in Iranian culture. The ministry suggested that Canberra’s decision was “influenced by internal developments,” including recent widespread protests across Australia in support of Palestinians. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi went further, calling Albanese a “weak politician” in a post on X and saying, “Iran is paying the price for the Australian people’s support for Palestine.”
Iran also vowed a “reciprocal reaction” to Australia’s diplomatic moves, though it is unclear what that may look like.
Notably, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also branded Albanese a “weak politician” last week after Canberra announced that it plans to recognize an independent Palestinian state at the United Nations General Assembly in September.
Still, Israel praised Albanese’s decision to cut ties with Iran. “Iran’s regime is not only a threat to Jews or Israel, it endangers the entire free world, including Australia,” the Israeli Embassy in Australia posted on X on Tuesday.
Australia is home to roughly 120,000 Jews and hosts the largest per capita share of Holocaust survivors outside of Israel, according to the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany. Antisemitic attacks in Australia have risen since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
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What We’re Following
Looming confidence vote. European markets tumbled on Tuesday following news that French Prime Minister François Bayrou will hold a vote of confidence on Sept. 8 to try to pass a contentious proposal seeking around 44 billion euros (or roughly $51 billion) in budget cuts. Opposition parties have already vowed not to back Bayrou’s minority government, meaning that French President Emmanuel Macron may have to call for snap parliamentary elections or nominate a new prime minister—his second time doing so within a year.
A source close to Bayrou told Reuters on Tuesday that the prime minister is open to negotiating the terms of his budget proposal, which would also cut two public holidays. But Bayrou remains adamant that extensive budget cuts, including freezes to welfare and pension spending, are vital to decrease France’s high deficit and grow the nation’s sluggish economy.
“I am not asking anyone to change his mind, but one can think it over,” Bayrou said.
A similar budget proposal was the downfall of former French Prime Minister Michel Barnier, who resigned in December 2024 after losing a no-confidence vote for his failure to pass an austerity budget deal aimed at curbing the country’s extensive deficit. Macron has struggled to find a prime minister who can navigate Paris’s hung parliament to tackle France’s economic crisis.
Expected flooding. Pakistan has evacuated at least 150,000 people along three areas of its Punjab province, officials said on Tuesday, after neighboring India released water from its overflowing Madhopur Dam. Heavy rainfall this summer has swollen three Indian rivers that flow into Pakistan: the Ravi, Sutlej, and Chenab. Experts suggest that climate change is to blame.
New Delhi warned Islamabad several times in recent days of potential cross-border flooding, which is a routine way of handling heavy rainfall in the region. Pakistan itself has suffered heavy monsoon rains this season that have killed more than 800 people since June. But India’s warnings may not be enough to prevent damage to Punjab’s farmland, which accounts for a large portion of the country’s food supply.
Such flooding could also exacerbate already inflamed tensions between the two nuclear-armed rivals, which are still reeling from brief, heavy fighting in May. India warned Pakistan of its dam relief plan via diplomatic channels rather than through the Indus Waters Commission, a mechanism brokered under the Indus Waters Treaty that New Delhi indefinitely suspended in April after 26 tourists were killed in India-controlled Kashmir. This was the two countries’ first public diplomatic contact in months.
Bombarding Gaza City. Palestinian families continued to flee Gaza City on Tuesday as Israeli forces escalated shelling on the eastern suburbs of Sabra, Shejaia, and Tuffah as well as in the northern town of Jabalia. According to the Israeli military, operations in the area aim to locate weapons and destroy militant-used tunnels ahead of a planned Israeli offensive targeting Gaza City, which Israel has called the last bastion of Hamas. Israel plans to summon around 60,000 reservists to supplement its expanded military operations there.
However, with around half of the Gaza Strip’s 2 million people currently in Gaza City, Israel’s strikes are wreaking havoc on the civilian population. At least 34 people were killed in Israeli attacks overnight and into Tuesday, including 18 Palestinians in Gaza City. Rights experts warn that this will exacerbate the city’s humanitarian crisis, which the world’s leading hunger monitor officially classified as a “famine” last Friday, citing widespread evidence of “starvation, destitution, and death.”
More than 62,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the Israel-Hamas war began in October 2023, and cease-fire talks remain stalled despite Hamas accepting a proposal last week for a 60-day truce. A new poll by Israel’s Institute for Policy and Strategy found on Tuesday that 76 percent of Jewish Israelis partially or fully believe that there are “no innocents” in Gaza.
Odds and Ends
A Dutch submarine, a four-masted Peruvian training ship, and a recreation of Christopher Columbus’s Santa Maria were among the many standout vessels that cruised down Amsterdam’s IJ River this weekend for the 2025 Sail festival. The five-day event (occurring for the first time in 10 years) also commemorated the city’s 750th anniversary with live music, fireworks, and classic Dutch cuisine. FP’s World Brief writer skipped work last week (shhh!) to attend Sail herself, and in her humble opinion, Spain’s two-masted historical recreation of El Galeón was the most exciting to board—though she doesn’t think that she’d enjoy living at sea for months on end without modern plumbing.
Great Job Alexandra Sharp & the Team @ World Brief – Foreign Policy Source link for sharing this story.
