A former senior Israeli security official says the mass shooting at a Chabad Hanukkah event in Bondi Beach, Australia, in which at least 11 people were murdered, was not an isolated incident but part of a broader, ongoing Iranian-led campaign against Jewish targets worldwide.
Attorney Sagiv Assoulin, a former senior figure in Israel’s security establishment and now a senior researcher at the Jerusalem Center for Foreign Affairs and Security, argues that the attack fits a clear pattern. According to him, Iran’s involvement is expressed on two parallel levels: the possible existence of planning and physical infrastructure enabling such attacks, and a long-term ideological and psychological campaign designed to legitimize violence against Jews across the globe.
“This is not a coincidence,” Assoulin stresses. “What we are seeing now are the outcomes of a sustained Iranian effort that has been operating for years and is now manifesting itself in different arenas around the world.”
Assoulin warns that Iranian influence operations do not rely solely on direct operational control. Instead, they cultivate an atmosphere of incitement, radicalization, and justification for violence, which can later translate into deadly attacks even far from the Middle East. Jewish and Israeli-linked communities, he says, remain prime targets in this global strategy.
