Australian citizen working as spy for Iran ‘orchestrated’ Bondi firebombing, Asio boss says

An Australian citizen working as a senior intelligence officer for Iran “orchestrated” a firebombing in Bondi, the country’s top spy has revealed, while a former Australian resident in Iraq directed the attack on a Melbourne synagogue. The homegrown ties to Australia’s “summer of antisemitism” are contained in a wide-ranging speech given by Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation’s (Asio) director general, Mike Burgess, on Wednesday night, in which he said the “hatred of Jews is one thing virtually all the violent extremist cohorts have in common”. Burgess also warned intelligence officials must contend with security threats from everywhere and all at once, calling for Australians who want a safer country to be more tolerant and give others a “fair go” in order to turn down the temperature. Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email The intelligence chief said the anticipated crescendo of security threats against Australia by the end of the decade had already arrived, including in December’s terror attack on Bondi Beach, in which 15 people died in an antisemitic terror attack. “Our degrading security environment is characterised by concurrent, cascading and compounding threats,” Burgess said. Among those threats are homegrown terrorists, foreign regimes targeting and harassing citizens and permanent residents, spies chasing critical details about the Aukus deal, and nation-states infiltrating critical infrastructure providers. …