Mike Burgess has released the statement he made at this afternoon’s press conference. In case you missed it, here it is in its entirety:
In this year’s Annual Threat Assessment I warned Australia’s complex, challenging and changing security environment is becoming more dynamic, diverse and degraded.
Dynamic, because we are confronting an increasing number of threats.
Diverse, because some nation states are using criminal proxies to undertake acts of foreign interference, espionage and politically motivated violence. Degraded, because authoritarian regimes are more willing to engage in reckless, high- harm activities. Unfortunately all three of those characteristics apply to this case.
For the past ten months, anti-Semitism has been one of ASIO’s most pressing priorities, involving the full use of our capabilities and powers. We have investigated dozens of incidents targeting Jewish communities, places of worship, businesses and prominent individuals. ASIO now assesses the Iranian Government directed at least two and likely more attacks on Jewish interests in Australia. Our painstaking investigation uncovered and unpicked the links between the alleged crimes and commanders in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the IRGC. The IRGC used a complex web of proxies to hide its involvement.
This is the sort of obfuscation and boundary-blurring I warned about earlier this year. It’s important to understand that ASIO is both a collector of intelligence and an assessor of intelligence. Formal assessments such as this one are not done quickly or taken lightly. Our analysts carefully weigh and weight every piece of intelligence.
In this case, their conclusions are clear. ASIO is still investigating possible Iranian involvement in a number of other attacks, but I want to stress we do not believe the regime is responsible for every act of anti-Semitism in Australia. It goes without saying that Iran’s actions are utterly unacceptable. They put lives at risk.
They terrified the community. They tore at our social fabric. Iran and its proxies literally and figuratively lit the matches and fanned the flames.
I want to assure all Australians that ASIO and our law enforcement partners take these matters extremely seriously; you do not just have the right to be safe, you have the right to feel safe.

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