The government’s sudden decision to refer to the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza as ‘occupied Palestinian territories’ is in marked contrast to its relative silence on Iran and other issues in the Middle East.

The decision follows the government’s refusal to sign on to a quite moderate June 2022 US-led statement, endorsed by 22 other countries including the UK, Germany and Canada, criticising the UN Human Rights Council’s plan for a commission of inquiry on the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel. The statement noted that this was a ‘further demonstration of long-standing, disproportionate attention given to Israel’ at the UN. However, at the same time, Australia did deliver a statement at the council expressing fundamental concerns about the commission of inquiry. It reiterated those concerns at the council’s June 2023 session.

In October 2022, Labor reversed the previous government’s position recognising West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Foreign Minister Penny Wong told the parliament: ‘Today the Government has reaffirmed Australia’s previous and longstanding position that Jerusalem is a final status issue that should be resolved as part of any peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian people.’ Wong also said: ‘We’ve rebalanced Australia’s positions in international forums while opposing anti-Israel bias in the UN.’

This has been contradicted by the government’s recognition of East Jerusalem, along with the West Bank, as ‘occupied Palestinian territory’.

Gaza, meanwhile, has not had a physical Israeli presence since 2005 and it has been ruled by Hamas, which has been regarded by Australia as a terrorist entity for financial sanctions since 2001 as part of implementing UN Security Council resolution 1373. It should therefore not be considered ‘occupied’. Moreover, none of the territories in question have ever been part of any Palestinian state, so referring to them as occupied Palestinian territory is objectively incorrect.

Apart from its criticism of Israel, the government says little about other issues and countries in the Middle East. There’s the slight exception of Iran, but even there Australia’s response falls short.

Australia has long maintained autonomous sanctions on Iran and has upheld multilateral sanctions. Wong used Australia’s Magnitsky powers to impose thematic (human rights) sanctions against Iranian individuals and entities—long after the US, Canada, the UK and EU had begun doing so—in December 2022, in February this year and again in March.

It also took Australia substantially longer than most of its allies to condemn Iran or impose sanctions against it for supplying drones and other weapons to Russia for its attack on Ukraine.

Australia applied its first Russia-related sanctions against Iran last December. It then lagged on further sanctions again until a February report by the Senate’s Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade References Committee into the human rights implications of recent violence in Iran was due. The report said it was unfortunate that Australia lagged behind other nations in responding with action, and the committee urged the government to be ‘unequivocal in its response to violence and human rights abuses in Iran’. In March, the government imposed a third package of sanctions on Iran for human rights abuses and its support for Russia.

Since then, the UK and EU have developed new sanctions regimes targeting Iran and, alongside Canada and the US, have continued to impose progressively heavier sanctions on Iranian individuals and entities nearly every month.

Australia’s government has not criticised any action by Iran since the foreign minister condemned the 19 May execution of  Majid Kazemi, Saeed Yaqoubi and Saleh Mirhashemi. Iran has reportedly hanged at least 423 people since the start of 2023 and its ‘morality police’ have returned to arresting women for not wearing their hijabs ‘properly’.

Australia summoned or spoke to the Iranian chargé d’affaires by phone 10 times between late September 2022 and early January 2023. It may have taken similar action since, but it’s unclear why it has taken such a low-key approach and not gone along with our allies’ sanctions and condemnations as Iran has doubled down on its human rights abuses, regional destabilisation, foreign interference and support for Russia.

The government has had little to say about events in the Middle East outside of Israel and Iran even though 2022–23 has seen overwhelming regional shifts. In addition, an Australian citizen, Robert Pether, remains unjustly jailed in Iraq, something that ought to warrant a statement.

Meanwhile, pressure has been maintained on Israel despite the Palestinian leadership’s longstanding refusal to accept two-state peace offers or, in recent years, even to engage in negotiations on the subject.

Instead of focusing solely on Israeli–Palestinian issues, Australian pressure should also be directed towards the Iranian regime over its piracy, terrorism, nuclear program, regional destabilisation, weapons proliferation and material support for Russia.

May was a busy month for diplomats in the Middle East. Twelve years after the Arab League suspended Syria’s membership, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was officially welcomed back into the fold. As the protracted war in Yemen shows signs of winding down, Iran and Saudi Arabia appear headed towards reconciliation. Meanwhile, Egypt brokered a ceasefire between Israel and Islamic Jihad, and Saudi Arabia has emerged as a key player in the efforts to end the civil war in Sudan.

What’s remarkable about these recent developments is the West’s near-total absence. While Western involvement in the Middle East has fluctuated over the years, the United States and its European allies have spearheaded the vast majority of diplomatic breakthroughs in the region since the end of the Cold War, including peace between Israel and Jordan, the normalisation of relations between Israel and the Gulf states, and the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

Western engagement also included the invasion of Iraq in 2003, military intervention in Libya in 2011, support for anti-Assad rebels in Syria, and routing the Islamic State from its base in Syria and Iraq. The US also backed Saudi Arabia’s air campaign in Yemen. But all that remains of these efforts is 2,500 US troops in Iraq and 900 in Syria.

America’s disengagement from the Middle East is part of a calculated strategy to shift its focus to its escalating rivalry with China. As a former US official told me, this is not simply a return to America’s pre-9/11 posture; rather, the US seeks to revert to its pre-1990 approach to the region, which combined a minimal military presence with reliance on regional allies to keep the peace. President Joe Biden takes pride in his administration’s ability to resist the Middle Eastern quagmire that ensnared his immediate predecessors, Barack Obama and Donald Trump, as they tried to pivot towards Asia.

There are two ways to understand the new reality in the Middle East. The first is to lament the gulf between Western aspirations and conditions on the ground. While the US and the EU still verbally endorse the two-state solution, Israelis and Palestinians have moved away from it. As Israel’s Jewish majority becomes more nationalist and ultra-orthodox, most Palestinians have come to favour armed resistance over President Mahmoud Abbas’s sclerotic Palestinian Authority.

Meanwhile, as the West continues to tout the importance of diplomacy in addressing Iran’s rapidly advancing nuclear program, there has been little action on this front. American and European passivity can be attributed to Iran’s brutal repression of the massive public protests that erupted across the country in September, as well as its military assistance to Russia in the Ukraine war.

But Iran’s nuclear program is becoming a ticking time bomb. Earlier this year, the International Atomic Energy Agency found uranium particles in Iran enriched to a weapons-grade level of 83.7%. Iran’s breakout time—the time it would need to produce enough fissile material for one nuclear weapon—has gone from 12 months when the nuclear deal was implemented to around 12 days.

Other countries have rushed to fill the vacuum created by the Western withdrawal from the region. When a brief missile exchange between Israel and Islamic Jihad in Gaza threatened to escalate into a larger conflict, Egypt took charge of the mediation efforts that ultimately ended the hostilities. Similarly, it was Turkish special forces, rather than a US drone strike, that killed Islamic State leader Abu Hussein al-Qurashi in late April.

While many in the West may despair at these sobering developments, there’s another way to understand the emerging post-American Middle Eastern order. Despite initial concerns that a US withdrawal would plunge the region into chaos and disarray, many in the Middle East now view Western interventionism itself as destabilising, with the West’s hasty departure from Afghanistan a case in point. The new order, led by regional actors and external powers such as Russia and China, may not align with Western preferences, owing to the role of autocratic regimes; still, it represents a distinct form of order.

Although the West may have hoped for a different outcome, there’s no denying that the Middle East has become less violent, as reflected in the de-escalation of the conflict in Yemen, the (China-brokered) Saudi–Iranian détente, and the maturation of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Likewise, the increased sense of responsibility among regional leaders to address crises such as the incipient civil war in Sudan is a positive development.

To be sure, the emerging order can be described as an authoritarian peace, and the challenges facing Middle Eastern countries remain significant. But the region is currently focused on economic integration and development, while Western policymakers always seem to focus on other problems.

Of course, the Middle East could just be experiencing an interregnum between violent eras. But it is more likely that we are witnessing a glimpse into the multipolar future. As a Chinese observer of the Middle East told me, his country has come to see the region as a ‘laboratory for a post-American world’. As the US continues to pull back, regional players assert themselves, and countries such as India, Turkey, Russia and China gain influence.

In a multipolar world, as Julien Barnes-Dacey and Hugh Lovatt note, the West must either invest significant resources in shaping global affairs or learn to adapt to others’ priorities. The latter option may not always result in outcomes that the West desires, but that is not necessarily a terrible thing.

The people responsible for Australia’s security are fully aware of the Iranian regime’s activities targeting Australians, at home and abroad.

An Iranian plot against a dissident living in Australia was foiled by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation in 2022. Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil announced in February that late last year, ‘ASIO disrupted the activities of individuals who had conducted surveillance of the home of an Iranian Australian, as well as extensive research of this individual and their family.’ This followed evidence to a parliamentary inquiry in January that Iran was behind a series of cyberattacks on Australian entities in an attempt to steal data to be used for extortion.

ASIO Director General Mike Burgess referred to both plots while presenting the 2023 national threat assessment last month, although he didn’t mention Iran by name. Yet Burgess sounded a warning very relevant to the Iranian case, saying: ‘Australia is facing an unprecedented challenge from espionage and foreign interference and I’m not convinced we, as a nation, fully appreciate the damage it inflicts on Australia’s security, democracy, sovereignty, economy and social fabric.’

Tehran’s hostility is also manifested through the arbitrary arrests, based on fabricated evidence, of Australians who travel to Iran. This is part of the Iranian’s regime’s hostage-diplomacy strategy—detaining innocent foreigners to blackmail their governments.

Australian academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert was arrested in Iran in 2018 and jailed for 804 days in harsh conditions. The case against her was based on groundless accusations. She was freed in November 2020 in a deal that reportedly involved the release from prison of the two Iranians behind a 2012 Bangkok terror plot. This aggressive and indefensible activity against Australians continues. In November 2022, the media reported that an Iranian Australian dual national was jailed in Iran and denied all access to consular support. According to Moore-Gilbert’s testimony to a parliamentary inquiry, Iranian agents in Australia monitor movements and activities of Australians who criticise Tehran’s human rights record.

And these are just examples that have been made public.

The regime in Tehran has values that are aggressively at odds with Australian democracy. For almost two decades, Australia imposed international and autonomous sanctions on Iran.

Over the past few weeks, Australia has began to impose a new series of sanctions on Iran. On 1 February, Foreign Minister Penny Wong announced the application of additional sanctions on ‘Iranian individuals and entities over abhorrent abuses of human rights’ during the violent suppression of the widespread protests sparked by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, who was imprisoned for wearing her headscarf improperly.

Australia now sanctions the regime’s Basij militia force and individuals in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. This is significant because the regime is increasingly indistinguishable from the IRGC. Notorious for being Iran’s primary mechanism of oppression of its people, and for spreading death and terror, the IRGC is directly under the control of the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. Former IRGC members control the parliament and hold key government positions. The IRGC has become ‘the country’s most powerful military and economic entity’, and its budget has been constantly increasing. Responding to Australia’s sanctions, an Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson criticised Australia’s treatment of its First Nations people.

Iran is spearheading operations that undermine Australia’s security and the stability of its allies directly and in the Middle East. The IRGC’s elite Quds Force engages in subversion across the region and is arming, training, funding and ‘inspiring’ terrorist organisations in Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, Syria,  Bahrain and Gaza.

Iran has, for years, been engaged in international crime, money laundering, drug and weapons smuggling, and maritime piracy, including numerous attacks on oil tankers. It has, without provocation, bombed strategic energy facilities in neighbouring countries such as Saudi Arabia, and economic centres. Australian navy ships were sent to the Persian Gulf in 2019 to protect international waterways against Iranian aggression.

Tehran harbours international terrorists, open enemies of the West including of Australia, who make Iran their home and headquarters. The UN confirmed in February that the current leader of al-Qaeda, Saif al-Adel, resides in Iran, along with other senior members of the organisation.

Iran’s drive over decades to produce an indigenous nuclear weapons capability in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is possibly the biggest danger, challenging fundamentals of the rules-based international order which Australia holds dear. The 2015 nuclear deal is no longer a valid mechanism for stopping Iran. The director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, warned in January that Iran has enough fissile material for ‘several nuclear weapons’, and called the nuclear deal ‘an empty shell’. IAEA inspectors recently detected uranium in Iran illegally enriched to 84%, just 6 percentage points shy of military-grade uranium used in atomic bombs. The latest IAEA reports indicate that Iran is now a whisker away from a nuclear-weapons capability.

Finally, Iran’s ruling mullahs made a strategic decision to side with Russia in its war against Ukraine. Iran has been supplying Moscow with deadly drones used by Russian forces, including for actions believed to be war crimes. Iran is now building a plant inside Russia to supply more drones. The burgeoning military ties between the two countries mean Tehran has chosen yet again to stand with the aggressors and anti-Western powers that reject Australia’s key values, including its strong support for the victim of unprovoked aggression, Ukraine.

To protect Australians, Canberra should be in the forefront of the campaign to contain, limit and deter this rogue regime. Australia’s latest decision, on 20 March, to sanction dozens of Iranians involved in human rights violations and the supply of drones to Russia for use against Ukraine, is an encouraging sign.

The biggest step needed is for Australia to fully join in international efforts to stop Iran from achieving its dangerous nuclear dreams. This requires US leadership above all else, and Canberra should let Washington know that Australia is fully committed to any such effort.

Women have been barred from education in Afghanistan and face mass arrests and summary executions in Myanmar. In Iran, failure to wear a hijab to the satisfaction of the morality police was enough to end in death—after being beaten by police, according to witnesses—for Mahsa Amini six months ago today.

Women’s rights are indivisible from national security. That’s the powerful message that came through strongly when four Australian women—one each from Afghanistan, Myanmar and Iran, plus a nationally renowned foreign correspondent and rights advocate—gathered for ASPI’s event for International Women’s Day.

Titled ‘Women in conflict and protest: a conversation on protecting human rights and strengthening peace and security’, the discussion focused on women, the grassroots movements they lead, and how they stand at the forefront of protests and movements to defend human rights.

The panellists were united in raising the international community’s shortcomings in supporting these women’s efforts in consistent, principled ways. Women have distinct experiences of conflict and oppression and play particular roles in responding. That includes bringing unique strengths to popular acts of resistance and to peace processes.

But realities for women across the world show that the importance of their role in peace and security continues to slip through the cracks of the international community’s agenda.

The women, peace and security agenda remains on the backburner, despite the fact that we’ve seen a backsliding, if not a complete unravelling, of women’s rights in many countries over the past few years after decades of progress.

In her keynote address, Shaharzad Akbar, former chair of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, highlighted that Afghan women started mobilising against Taliban rule as early as 16 August 2021—just one day after the group took control of Kabul. Undeterred by the brutal crackdowns they continue to face, these women have adopted different forms of protest and resistance against the regime, such as establishing underground schools and libraries.

Nos Hosseini, an Australian-Iranian lawyer and refugee rights advocate, spoke about anger against the regime in Tehran and the courage of Iranian women who were ‘unafraid of the bullets they’re met with’.

‘It’s not about the headscarf at all,’ she said of the protests that have now lasted six months and claimed at least 500 lives. ‘It’s about dignity.’

The power of social media as a tool for women protesting emerged as a key feature of the discussion. Mon Zin, a founding member of Global Myanmar Spring Revolution, described social media as ‘the life of the revolution’.

Myanmar’s civil disobedience movement has its own verified Twitter page where protest ideas are posted and discussed. Zin said women use social media to disseminate anti-coup symbols. These include the three-finger salute, a symbol of resistance and democracy movements in Southeast Asia adopted from The Hunger Games film series; bouquets of flowers, a reference to Myanmar’s jailed former leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s signature floral hairstyle; and bright-red lips, a reference to the #RedLipsSpeakTruthToPower campaign aimed at raising awareness about sexual violence against women committed by the junta.

Similarly, in Afghanistan and Iran, social media helps women overcome barriers to their physical movement and access to public spaces. Akbar observed that Afghan women, unable to take to the streets due to Taliban restrictions, have chosen to record videos at home, producing pieces of music and poetry with their faces covered and releasing them on social media.

Hosseini raised the invaluable role social media has played in sharing Iran’s realities with the world, mobilising support not just within Iran but also among the international community. Despite internet blackouts, she said, people have used virtual private networks to disseminate footage and imagery of the protests and the government’s crackdown. She particularly emphasised the role of social media in ensuring that Iran’s story reached the homes and phones of non-Iranians whose support is crucial in amplifying the voices of Iranians and ensuring that their struggle is not forgotten by the international community.

Women are also subverting and repurposing symbols of male power and patriarchy. For instance, Mon explained how women activists in Myanmar developed a tactic to keep security forces at bay by stringing up women’s clothing across the streets. In traditional Myanmar culture, walking beneath women’s clothing is considered bad luck and even emasculating for men.

Hosseini noted that the current wave of protests in Iran involves all genders, ages, ethnicities and religions. People are standing together in solidarity against ‘the gender apartheid regime that’s engulfed and held the Iranian populace hostage for the last 44 years’, she said.

Maryam Zahid established Afghan Women on the Move to address the lack of support available in parts of Australia to Afghan women who are recovering from past traumas and trying to rebuild their lives. The organisation uses community-based approaches to provide social engagement, mental health and settlement support to Afghan and other women from multicultural backgrounds in Australia.

In the face of extraordinary stories of courage of women fighting repressive rimes, Sophie McNeill, senior Australia researcher at Human Rights Watch, underlined the international community’s short and selective attention span for women’s rights. While media, governments and the public often show keen support for courageous women protesters early on, they tend to lose interest over the longer term.

The other panellists agreed. Zahid, for instance, recalled receiving enthusiastic political and media attention in the days following the Taliban takeover in 2021. But that evaporated soon after as a business-as-usual attitude set in.

Looking ahead, Zin encouraged members of the public to participate in online petitions and campaigns supporting the civil-disobedience movement and to let governments know that Australian public opinion stands firmly against the junta and with the people of Myanmar. She also underlined the importance of funding civil-society organisations.

McNeill reiterated the importance of long-term investments in the people on the ground, focusing on their protection, education and empowerment. She urged Australians to talk to their local members of parliament about increasing foreign aid. And she called on the international community to be more consistent in calling out human rights abuses wherever they occur in the world.

The importance of placing international pressure on repressive regimes and to break expectations of impunity was echoed by Hosseini. Overall, as McNeill also said, governments need to learn from mistakes and realise that conversations on human rights, women’s rights and security must not happen in silos.

The discussion brought out the contrast between the incredible resilience of grassroot movements and the international community’s patchy concern. For me, this raised questions about the usefulness of international frameworks such as the UN women, peace and security agenda and the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women.

Authoritarian regimes such as the Taliban, the Iranian state and the Myanmar junta, as Zin noted, simply don’t care about such frameworks, and the international community seems to lack the political will to take concrete action against the regimes’ violations.

What is the use of these frameworks, then, if they are only applied in situations where they are easily accepted and palatable, and are absent where they are needed most? In a recent advocacy video, an Afghan woman called for the world to ‘not forget the women of Afghanistan and help them not to be buried alive’. Her appeal shows what is at stake when the world turns a blind eye to gender-based violence and repression.

The International Atomic Energy Agency’s 8 June motion to censure Iran for not disclosing three decades-old former secret nuclear sites, and Tehran’s response of removing multiple IAEA cameras that monitor Iranian uranium enrichment levels, doesn’t foreshadow the imminent collapse of the Iran nuclear deal or provide any evidence of Iranian intent to develop a nuclear weapon.

What these events do represent is further, serious manoeuvring by key stakeholders in the deal (officially, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA) to leverage their advantages during the ongoing attempts to revive it.

Negotiations between Iran and the US to revive the JCPOA stalled in March when the two sides reached an impasse on trade-offs over US sanctions and verification procedures. However, the Iranians now claim that the major stumbling block is their demand that the US remove Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) from its list of foreign terrorist organisations.

For Iran, this demand is reportedly ‘non-negotiable’ given the IRGC’s special national security role, including ‘defending the revolution’ from internal and external threats, and the role of its Quds Force in promoting Iranian interests abroad, especially regionally, largely through both military and paramilitary means.

The US, which designated the IRGC as a terrorist organisation in 2019 because of its support to other regional terrorist organisations such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah and the Palestinian movement Hamas, has rejected Iran’s demand, claiming the IRGC’s listing is unrelated to nuclear sanctions. This is technically correct. However, while most of the 1,500 or so US sanctions imposed on Iran by former president Donald Trump are not directly nuclear related, they are indirectly related as part of his much wider ‘maximum pressure’ campaign.

What is or is not negotiable by either side will depend on what each wants from a revived deal.

For Iran, do the principles behind its stand on the IRGC outweigh the broader benefits of the US lifting key economic sanctions? That would give Iran access to billions of dollars of frozen funds and some return to normal trade, especially the export of oil and gas, across international markets. Although Iran has so far survived the effects of US sanctions, the direct and indirect costs to its economy and people have been substantial. There’s a strong imperative to reach a revived deal for its immediate benefits, and a hope that international pressure due to Iran’s assumed total, transparent compliance with the deal’s conditions would stop any future US administration from a repeat withdrawal.

For the US, the principal benefit would be meeting its non-proliferation objective by facilitating Iran’s recommitment not to develop nuclear weapons and putting in place monitoring procedures that would very quickly detect any intent to do so. The US would also seek to significantly extend the sunset dates for existing safeguard. That outcome would help settle one element of instability in the Middle East. A more stable Middle East would also enable the US to continue to lessen its military commitment to the region and redirect its interests and efforts to Europe and Asia (that is, Russia and China). Collectively, these outcomes could also meet US needs stated in late May by Robert Malley, US special envoy for Iran, that the benefits of a revived deal to the US must outweigh the relief that Iran would receive.

However, Malley was also reported as saying that demands that go beyond the scope of the JCPOA—which presumably include removal of the IRGC from the US list of foreign terrorist organisations—will continue to be rejected. There’s another US reality also: congressional constraints could, and most likely would, prevent President Joe Biden from unilaterally delisting the IRGC.

The challenge to the logic of reaching a deal is making it happen. This month’s IAEA censure motion was a hard push in that direction. It was submitted by the US and three IAEA governing board members, the UK, France and Germany, and approved by 30 of the 35 board members, including Australia. It picked up on an Iranian technical non-disclosure and Iran’s inadequate response to evidence of nuclear activity some decades ago at three nuclear locations, two in Tehran province and one in the northwestern province of Kurdistan.

This censure motion sought to expose Iran as untrustworthy about past, and potentially future, disclosures of nuclear development. Evidence of the sites was reportedly provided by Israel, which has made detailed exposures of Iran’s nuclear programs prior to 2003. Israel is a member of the IAEA board, but not a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi added to these concerns on 9 June when he claimed that the removal of monitoring cameras would not enable the IAEA to continue to monitor enrichment levels, suggesting that Iran could produce uranium enriched to 90%, which is weapons grade, in ‘three to four weeks’. He said this ‘would be a fatal blow’ to future JCPOA negotiations.

This was a clear message to Iran of a lack of trust, and implied that trust could be restored, and monitored, through a revived JCPOA.

Tehran’s decision to remove the IAEA’s monitoring capability was, presumably, the reverse side of the same coin: to put pressure on the US to rejoin a revitalised JCPOA, enabling Iran to demonstrate trust through its recommitment, along with all other original signatories, to non-proliferation and all JCPOA enrichment, verification and dispute-resolution provisions.

According to several sources with expertise in non-proliferation, there is no evidence that Iran is covertly developing a nuclear weapon or intends to do so. If it did, it would quickly be discovered by related intelligence coverage across Iran’s nuclear industry. It is widely assessed that Iran wants the JCPOA revived, but will play hardball to maximise the benefits it receives. The US also wants to rejoin, but not at the cost of delisting the IRGC. Sparring will continue pending a face-saving formula acceptable to both sides.