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

Asio director general, Mike Burgess, has called for Australians who want a safer country to be more tolerant and give others a ‘fair go’ in order to turn down the temperature. Photograph: Hollie Adams/Reuters View image in fullscreen Asio director general, Mike Burgess, has called for Australians who want a safer country to be more tolerant and give others a ‘fair go’ in order to turn down the temperature. Photograph: Hollie Adams/Reuters Australian citizen working as spy for Iran ‘orchestrated’ Bondi firebombing, Asio boss says Mike Burgess’s annual threat assessment warns social media is ‘amplifying’ an erosion of trust in institutions, promoting discord and heightening polarisation Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast 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. The underlying theme in Burgess’s annual threat assessment is that the world’s security environment has degraded and social media is “amplifying and accelerating” an erosion of trust in institutions, promoting discord and heightening polarisation. “Whether online or in the real world, when intolerance is tolerated, when violent language and violent acts are left unchecked, they become normalised, reinforcing the impression they are acceptable and compounding the likelihood of further violence,” Burgess said. The Asio boss revealed two attacks linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on Australia’s Jewish community were directed by two individuals living offshore with “strong ties to Australia”. One, an Australian citizen based in Iran and a senior agent wit