Category: 2. World

Indian exporters are bracing for disruptions after a US Homeland Security notification confirmed Washington would impose an additional 25% tariff on all Indian-origin goods from Wednesday, ramping up trade pressure on the Asian nation.

Indian exports will face US duties of up to 50% – among the highest imposed by Washington – after President Donald Trump announced extra tariffs as punishment for New Delhi’s increased purchases of Russian oil earlier in August.

The new duties will apply to goods entering the US for consumption or withdrawn from warehouses for consumption from 12:01 am EDT on Wednesday or 9:31 am IST, according to the Homeland Security notice.

The Indian rupee weakened 0.2% to 87.75 per US dollar in early trade, even as the greenback declined against many other currencies. The benchmark equity indexes NSEI and BSESN were each trading 0.8% lower.

The notification said exceptions would include in-transit shipments with proper certification, humanitarian aid, and items covered under reciprocal trade programs.

The notification reiterated that the action was in response to India’s indirect support of Russia’s military incursion into Ukraine.

India’s Commerce Ministry did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment on the latest notification.

“The government has no hope for any immediate relief or delay in US tariffs,” said a Commerce Ministry official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to media.

Exporters hit by tariffs would be provided financial assistance and encouraged to diversify to alternative markets including China, Latin America and the Middle East, the official added.

“The government has identified nearly 50 countries for increasing Indian exports, particularly of textiles, food processed items, leather goods, marine products.”

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has vowed not to compromise the interests of the country’s farmers even if there is a heavy price to pay. Modi is also taking steps to improve ties with China with his first visit in seven years planned for the end of the month.

Exporters seek aid

Exporter groups estimate hikes could affect nearly 55% of India’s $87 billion in merchandise exports to the US, while benefiting competitors such as Vietnam, Bangladesh and China.

“The US customers have already stopped new orders. With these additional tariffs, the exports could come down by 20-30% from September onward,” said Pankaj Chadha, president, Engineering Exports Promotion Council.

Chadha added that the government has promised financial aid including increased subsidies on bank loans and support for diversification in the event of financial losses.

“However, the exporters see limited scope for diversifying to other markets or selling in the domestic market,” he said.

Private sector analysts warn that a sustained 50% tariff could weigh on India’s economy and corporate profits – prompting the steepest earnings downgrades in Asia – even if proposed domestic tax cuts partly cushion the blow.

Capital Economics said last week that if full US tariffs come into force, the hit to India’s economic growth would be 0.8 percentage points both this year and next.

Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar said last week trade talks are ongoing and that Washington’s concern over Russian oil purchases was not equally applied to other major buyers such as China and the European Union.

There is no directive from the government so far regarding oil purchases from Russia. Companies will continue to buy oil on the basis of economics, three refining sources said.

Ten others wounded and nearly 7,000 homes damaged after Kajiki batters Vietnam with fierce winds and torrential rains.

At least three people have been killed in Vietnam after Typhoon Kajiki battered northern and central areas of the country, bringing fierce winds and torrential rains that collapsed homes, felled trees and turned streets in the capital, Hanoi, into rivers.

The storm, which made landfall in Vietnam on Monday, also left at least 10 people wounded, authorities said on Tuesday.

It has now crossed into Laos, weakened into a tropical depression.

Vietnam’s government, in a statement, said Kajiki damaged nearly 7,000 homes, inundated 28,800 hectares (71,166 acres) of rice plantings and felled some 18,000 trees. It also brought down 331 electricity poles, causing widespread blackouts in Thanh Hoa, Nghe An, Ha Tinh, Thai Nguyen and Phu Tho provinces.

The country’s national weather agency forecast continued downpours through Tuesday, with some areas likely to get up to 150 millimetres (6 inches) of rain in six hours, potentially causing flash floods and landslides.

In Hanoi, local media reported that continued heavy rains have caused widespread flooding, submerging streets, stalling vehicles and snarling traffic.

According to VN Express, the floodwaters on National Highway 6, which links Hanoi with northwestern provinces, reached nearly 1 metre (3.2 feet) in some places, stalling cars and motorbikes.

Ahead of the storm’s landfall, Vietnamese authorities evacuated some 44,000 people across five provinces and called all fishing boats back to harbour.

The military has also mobilised more than 346,000 personnel and 8,200 vehicles, including five aircraft, to support storm relief, according to Viet Nam News.

The military has instructed its troops to remain on high alert and prepare for rapid deployment in areas vulnerable to landslides and flash floods.

Human-caused climate change is driving more intense and unpredictable weather patterns that can make destructive floods and storms more likely, particularly in the tropics.

In Vietnam, more than 100 people have been killed or left missing from natural disasters in the first seven months of 2025, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.

Economic losses have been estimated at more than $21m.

Vietnam suffered $3.3bn in economic losses last September as a result of Typhoon Yagi, which swept across the country’s north and caused hundreds of deaths.

• Analysts warn India’s GDP growth could dip below 6%.
• Small exporters fear closures, rivals like Bangladesh benefit.
• India plans relief package as US-India ties strain.
  

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MUMBAI: Indian exports to the United States will face some of the highest tariffs in the world this week, barring a last-minute reversal from President Donald Trump.

Trump has tied issues of war and peace to trade, threatening to slap 50% duties on New Delhi in retaliation for its continued purchases of Russian oil — which Washington argues help finance Moscow’s war in Ukraine.

The tariff offensive has rattled US-India ties, given New Delhi a new incentive to repair relations with Beijing, and carries major consequences for the world’s fifth-largest economy.

Trump issued a three-week deadline on August 6, which is expected to take effect on Wednesday morning in India.

How bad will it be?

The United States was India’s top export destination in 2024, with shipments worth $87.3 billion.

Analysts at Nomura warn that 50% duties would be “akin to a trade embargo”, devastating smaller firms with “lower value add and thinner margins”.

Elara Securities’s Garima Kapoor said no Indian product can “stand any competitive edge” under such heavy import taxes.

Economists estimate tariffs could shave 70 to 100 basis points off India’s GDP growth this fiscal year, dragging growth below 6%, the weakest pace since the pandemic.

Exporters in textiles, seafood and jewellery are already reporting cancelled US orders and losses to rivals such as Bangladesh and Vietnam, raising fears of heavy job cuts.

A small reprieve: pharmaceuticals and electronics, including iPhones assembled in India, are exempt for now.

S&P estimates exports equivalent to 1.2% of India’s GDP will be hit, but says it will be a “one-off” shock that “will not derail” the country’s long-term growth prospects.

Will either side blink?

There’s no sign yet. In fact, since the US and Russian presidents met in Alaska, Washington has ramped up criticism of India.

“India acts as a global clearinghouse for Russian oil, converting embargoed crude into high-value exports while giving Moscow the dollars it needs,” White House trade adviser Peter Navarro wrote in the Financial Times earlier this month, slamming the country’s refiners for “profiteering”.

Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar fired back, arguing India’s purchases helped stabilise global oil markets — and were done with Washington’s tacit approval in 2022.

He argued that both the United States and Europe buy refined oil and associated products from India.

“If you have a problem buying oil from India, oil or refined products, don’t buy it”, he said, speaking in New Delhi. “Nobody forced you to buy it — but Europe buys, America buys.”

Jaishankar said that, until Trump’s ultimatum, there had been “no conversations” asking them to stop buying Moscow’s oil.

Trade trackers at Kpler say India’s stance will become clearer only in September, as most August shipments were contracted before Trump’s threats.

But experts say India is in a tricky situation.

India needs “considerable ingenuity and flexibility” to escape “what appears to be a no-win situation”, said Nandan Unnikrishnan of New Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation.

Washington, Unnikrishnan argued, is telling India: “We think that you are the weakest link in the Russia-Ukraine geopolitics chain”.

What can India do?

New Delhi has sought to bolster its economy while deepening ties with both BRICS partners and regional rivals.

Jaishankar flew to ally Moscow, producing pledges to ease barriers to bilateral trade, while Prime Minister Narendra Modi is preparing his first visit to China in seven years to repair long-frosty relations.

Domestically, Indian media reports that the government is working on a $2.8 billion package for exporters, a six-year programme aimed at easing liquidity concerns.

Modi has also proposed tax cuts on everyday goods to spur spending and cushion the economy.

What is blocking a trade deal?

Talks have stumbled over agriculture and dairy.

Trump wants greater US access, while Modi is determined to shield India’s farmers, a huge voter bloc.

Indian media reports suggested that US negotiators cancelled a planned late-August trip to India. That sparked speculation that discussions had broken down.

Jaishankar, however, says talks are continuing, adding drily: “Negotiations are still going on in the sense that nobody said the negotiations are off,” he said. “And people, people do talk to each other.”

PodcastPodcast, The Take

Dr Mimi Syed on what an official famine declaration could mean for Palestinians starving in Gaza.

Famine has been declared in Gaza City and surrounding areas, with more than half a million Palestinians facing “catastrophic conditions”, according to a UN-backed monitor. As Israel advances its plan to seize Gaza City, what scars will famine leave on Palestinians for generations to come?

In this episode:

• Dr Mimi Syed (@Memers1st), doctor of emergency medicine

Episode credits:

This episode was produced by Amy Walters, Sonia Bhagat, Tracie Hunte, Julia Muldavin and Marcos Bartolomé, with Phillip Lanos, Spencer Cline, Melanie Marich, Kisaa Zehra, Farhan Rafid and our guest host, Kevin Hirten. It was edited by Amy Walters and Sarí el-Khalili.

Our sound designer is Alex Roldan. Our video editors are Hisham Abu Salah and Mohannad al-Melhem. Alexandra Locke is The Take’s executive producer. Ney Alvarez is Al Jazeera’s head of audio. 

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In the lead-up to the summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska this month, things did not look good for Ukraine. Characterizations of the summit oscillated between a “new Yalta,” in which the U.S. president might agree to the Kremlin’s demands for a Russian sphere of influence over Ukraine, and a “new Munich,” in which Trump would throw Ukraine under the bus and withdraw U.S. support for the country’s defense. In other words, expectations in Ukraine and among Kyiv’s allies were low.

Yet the summit didn’t end in a major disaster for Ukraine. Trump didn’t negotiate with Putin on Kyiv’s behalf; he didn’t agree to start normalizing relations with Russia before the war in Ukraine was resolved; and on August 18, he received Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and a phalanx of European leaders at the White House, where they collectively managed to throw the diplomatic ball back into Putin’s court. “This was very much a day of team Europe and team U.S. together supporting Ukraine,” Finnish President Alexander Stubb said afterward.

But although Putin now knows that his aspirational Plan A, in which Trump would simply impose a deal on Kyiv written in Moscow, is unlikely to materialize, he has shifted to his more workable Plan B, in which Trump will lose patience and significantly reduce U.S. assistance to Ukraine. In the Kremlin’s calculus, this still counts as winning, and Putin’s diplomatic strategy is still following the three-pronged approach that my co-authors and I outlined in Foreign Affairs a few months ago. Moscow is holding the U.S. president’s attention, forestalling a new round of painful U.S. sanctions, and keeping the fighting going.

This is because, in the Kremlin’s assessment, time is on Russia’s side. Moscow has the upper hand on the battlefield: it has maintained a significant numerical advantage in personnel and equipment, and despite mounting casualties, it has continued to gradually gnaw through the fortified lines in the Donbas. Moreover, Russia is catching up in drone warfare, denying Ukraine its competitive edge. Moscow doesn’t want a cease-fire to stop the war right now—unless, of course, all of its political demands are simply met.

Russia is playing Trump for time. But despite the country’s confidence, it’s not clear that Putin has a realistic contingency plan should Kyiv prove able to hold on, as it has for the past three years. If, for example, the EU speeds up delivery of ammunition and drones from existing stock and extends a financial lifeline to Kyiv by confiscating the $250 billion worth of frozen Russian assets sitting in its banks, the Kremlin may not achieve its strategic goal of Ukraine’s subjugation. Despite putting Russia’s economy and society on a war footing, Putin may need more than just time to win.

FROM PLAN A TO PLAN B

Early engagements with the second Trump administration seemed encouraging for Moscow’s Plan A. Trump appointed his friend Steve Witkoff as a special envoy for negotiations with Russia, and Witkoff visited Moscow several times and spent hours talking to Putin. Between Trump’s inauguration in January and the summer, the U.S. and Russian presidents had three lengthy phone calls, and Putin’s talking points clearly made an impact on his U.S. counterpart, as painfully evidenced in Trump’s dressing down of Zelensky in the Oval Office on February 28.

Moreover, Moscow has been trying to compartmentalize the relationship with the United States, as was clear during the first high-level meeting between the Russians and Trump’s national security team on February 18. The Kremlin suggested seeking peace in Ukraine in tandem with a broader normalization of U.S.-Russian ties, which would include reopening the consulates in both countries (which have been closed since 2017), restarting arms control talks, and boosting mutual trade and investment.

By summer, however, it had become apparent that the Kremlin’s charm offensive was faltering. Zelensky, with a lot of counseling from European leaders, had managed to patch up the relationship with Trump by signing a mineral deal that provided the United States with preferential access to Ukraine’s natural resources, particularly rare-earth minerals. In return, the White House has continued Kyiv’s access to U.S. military assistance, including American intelligence and the ability to purchase U.S. weapons with European money. And on July 14, speaking alongside Mark Rutte, the secretary-general of NATO, Trump threatened “very severe tariffs” if Russia didn’t agree to an unconditional cease-fire.

In the Kremlin’s assessment, time is on Russia’s side.

The threat of further economic coercion had teeth. In 2024, Russia exported a meager $3 billion in goods to the United States, so even triple-digit tariffs would not seriously affect the Kremlin’s budget. But Trump has imposed a 25 percent punitive tariff on Indian goods for purchasing Russian oil—a tariff that will likely further increase the discounts that Russian oil sellers need to provide to Indian buyers, reducing the profitability of the oil trade for the Kremlin.

The decrease in oil and gas revenues is already affecting the war economy: some of the Russian regions that previously offered lavish payouts for military recruits are reducing sign-up bonuses because funds are drying up. The most visible sign of this is the country’s ballooning budget deficit. At the beginning of this year, the Kremlin’s plan was to have a budget deficit of just 0.5 percent of the country’s GDP. Yet in June, the Kremlin had to increase that to 1.8 percent of GDP. It will overshoot even this target; in the first seven months of this year, the budget deficit already amounted to 2.2 percent of GDP.

More U.S. sanctions could also prove damaging. The United States, for instance, has not yet blacklisted Russian energy giants, such as Rosneft and Lukoil, but such a move would put significant pressure on the Kremlin’s cash flow. As Alexandra Prokopenko wrote in Foreign Affairs in January, the Russian economy has enough steam to support Putin’s war machine for another 18 to 24 months, but the situation is worsening.

This reality presented the Kremlin with a dilemma of whether to continue the hard-nosed course, ignoring Trump’s threats—or try to assuage him. In the end, the Kremlin decided it was better to initiate a meeting between the presidents and get Trump and Putin’s personal relationship back on track. The Kremlin invited Witkoff to come to Moscow, where he was presented with a semblance of an acceptable deal on August 7. The Russians also suggested a meeting with Trump, which was hastily organized in Alaska. The usual Russian mantra that leaders’ summits must be carefully prepared—a justification that the Kremlin uses to explain Putin’s reluctance to meet with Zelensky—was tellingly abandoned.

THE DEAL MIRAGE

After a three-hour conversation between Putin and Trump, the Alaskan summit’s scheduled working lunch was canceled and the press conference downgraded to official remarks by each president. This was a clear signal that Russia’s attempts to compartmentalize the Ukrainian war and to normalize ties in other areas had failed. But that was the only notable underperformance by Putin’s team.

On the core issue, Putin achieved his key goal for the meeting: he convinced Trump that the White House’s peacemaking efforts should be focused on reaching a comprehensive resolution to end the war, not an unconditional cease-fire, and that the fighting could continue in the meantime. Despite Trump’s previous claims, as well as urging by European leaders and Zelensky before the summit, the White House has imposed no punitive measures on Russia over the Kremlin’s refusal to agree to a cease-fire.

How did Putin succeed? He matched Trump’s performative diplomacy with performative negotiations, essentially tricking the Trump administration into believing that he was making serious concessions. According to Trump and various U.S. officials, such as Witkoff, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Vice President JD Vance, Putin signaled in Alaska that he was ready to climb down from some of his maximalist demands—demands that were absurd to begin with.

Instead of demanding the full withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from the four regions to which Moscow lays claim, the Kremlin is now asking Kyiv to surrender only the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, while in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, Moscow will accept the current line of contact. Putin apparently suggested that he is also willing to trade other parts of Ukraine that Russia occupies, including pockets of the Dnipropetrovsk, Sumy, and Kharkiv regions.

These land swaps would see Kyiv surrender a land mass nearly ten times as large as what Russia is prepared to give back. Moreover, the quarter of the Donetsk region that Ukraine still controls, including the strategic cities of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk, is the most fortified part of the country and has been turned into a massive network of defense installations since its recapture in 2014 from Russian-backed separatists. For Zelensky, surrendering this territory is all but impossible for both political and military reasons. All available polling shows that Ukrainian society will not accept the country’s territory’s being traded; and from the military perspective, surrendering western Donbas would amount to giving the invader the key to all of northern and central Ukraine. (There are no major fortification lines beyond the “fortress belt” that Putin wants Kyiv to abandon.)

Nevertheless, after the summit, Trump accepted the logic of “land swaps” offered by Putin, although he said that the decision would be Zelensky’s to make.

GUARANTEES WITHOUT SECURITY

Another key issue discussed in Alaska was postwar security guarantees for Ukraine. Witkoff told Fox News that “epic progress” had been made during the summit. According to him, Putin agreed for the first time to the concept of security guarantees for Ukraine, and the result could be even stronger than NATO’s Article 5 collective defense clause—without actual NATO membership for Kyiv.

Moreover, according to Witkoff, Russia agreed to enact a law that it would not take any more land from Ukraine after a peace deal or “go after any other European countries.” These promises were greeted as “groundbreaking” by Trump’s team, and the U.S. president presented them as a major achievement during his August 18 meeting at the White House with Zelensky and a group of European leaders.

For a moment, there was optimism that a security guarantee could be hammered out. Capitalizing on the vague language of the Russian proposal, Europeans jumped on the opportunity to present a plan of their own: the deployment of a European “reassurance force” in Ukraine after the war, to which ten EU countries would potentially contribute troops, while Trump promised vague “air support” from the United States without elaborating on what that could mean in practice.

A genuine peace agreement remains as elusive as ever.

But on August 20, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov poured cold water on the plan. According to him, Moscow’s idea for a security guarantee is not a set of bilateral commitments between Ukraine and the U.S. and European governments with formulations similar to Article 5, but rather a consensus-based agreement guaranteed by the UN Security Council’s five permanent members—with the Kremlin holding veto power. Essentially, he wants the fox to help guard the henhouse. Moreover, Moscow insists on seriously limiting the Ukrainian armed forces—both in numbers and equipment—as well as their ability to cooperate with foreign partners in arms procurement, intelligence sharing, weapons design, and training.

The “epic progress” turned out to be strikingly similar to the positions Russia held in the talks that took place in Istanbul in the first two months after Moscow’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine and ultimately collapsed. As first described in Foreign Affairs by Samuel Charap and Sergey Radchenko, those negotiations ended with no agreement in part because of Moscow’s and Kyiv’s inability to bridge the very same gap over security guarantees. For Putin, ending Ukraine’s security partnership with the West remains a core goal. But from Kyiv’s vantage point, the size of its army and ability to maintain ties to NATO’s militaries are a prerequisite for retaining sovereignty and thus nonnegotiable.

Moreover, Ukraine has reasons to believe that its negotiating position is stronger than it was in 2022. Unlike three years ago, European countries are finally ready to provide the security guarantees Kyiv seeks—or at least they now say so. Even more important, the depth of cooperation between Ukraine and NATO now far outstrips the level Putin worried about before the war, precisely because of Russia’s invasion. The alliance is intimately involved in building and testing weapons with Ukraine, training its army, and supplying it with intelligence and arms, including ones that can strike deep inside Russian territory. It is unimaginable that Kyiv would abandon this partnership voluntarily. Despite Trump’s wish to organize a meeting between Putin and Zelensky as well as a trilateral summit to seal the deal, a genuine peace agreement remains as elusive as ever.

SOLDIERING ON

It’s impossible to predict how Trump will deal with the chasm between Russia’s positions and what is acceptable to Ukraine. But while Putin stalls, it is clear that Europe is busy developing plans of its own. Europe’s Plan A consists of carefully pushing Trump to accept the fact that it’s the Kremlin that is obstructing his peace efforts and that only pressure can incentivize Putin to engage in compromise. If this plan succeeds, Putin’s procrastinating could backfire, with Trump at last hitting Russia with more sanctions. The Europeans are also planning to continue to pay for American weapons for Ukraine. In the week after the Alaskan summit, the Pentagon approved the sale to Ukraine of $850 million worth of equipment, including 3,350 Extended Range Attack Munition air-launched missiles with a range of 150 to 280 miles.

But if the Europeans’ Plan A fails—if Trump doesn’t blame Putin, or if he merely loses interest—they are developing their own Plan B. At the very least, they plan to maintain current levels of military support to Ukraine and increase the sanctions pressure on Russia (although the EU’s sanctions toolkit is far less powerful than Washington’s). If key European countries agree to step up the pressure, they could also share more of their existing military equipment stock with Ukraine, temporarily reducing the combat readiness of their own forces but keeping Ukraine in the fight at this crucial juncture. They could also provide a long-term financial lifeline to Kyiv by seizing the nearly $250 billion in state Russian assets frozen in the EU, allowing the purchase of U.S. weapons without reaching deeper into European taxpayers’ pockets. In theory, if the United States keeps providing intelligence, doesn’t drop the sanctions, and allows the EU to buy weapons for Ukraine, Europeans can self-organize and play a critical role in sustaining Ukraine’s defense effort to the very moment when Putin’s war machine may run out of offensive steam some 18 to 24 months down the road.

Europe’s Plan B probably will not deter the Kremlin: given Putin’s demonstrated ability to stomach pain and keep plugging away at an elusive victory, the Russian leader may instruct his generals and economic team to simply carry on. His government can navigate the deterioration in public finances by cutting expenditures on education, health care, and infrastructure, as it has throughout the war. Putin is also prepared to tap into the deep well of Russian manpower by force if the financial incentives dry up further. In July, the Kremlin launched digital draft notices to push more Russian men into the army; the moment a future recruit receives an electronic notification that he has been called up, Russia’s borders are closed to him and there are various penalties for not serving. The Kremlin is obviously preparing money and troops for a protracted war in which its only strategy is to outlast Ukraine militarily and economically.

Yet the eventuality for which the Kremlin does not appear to have a plan is that Russia will be unable to translate its massive advantage in manpower and materiel into a decisive breakthrough—as has been the case since the war began. A plan, in other words, for the possibility that Ukraine’s defense lines don’t crumble after all.

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Iran directed at least two attacks against Australia’s Jewish community, the domestic spy agency has determined, prompting the Albanese government to expel Tehran’s ambassador to Canberra from Australia.

The prime minister announced on Tuesday that the Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation (Asio) had “credible intelligence” to determine the Iranian government was behind the attacks against the Adass Israel synagogue in Melbourne and Lewis’s Continental Kitchen in Bondi in Sydney.

The Asio director-general, Mike Burgess, said the attacks had been ordered by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), working through a “layer cake of cut-outs” – paid intermediaries acting in Australia.

The IRGC will be listed as a terrorist organisation, with new laws to be considered by federal parliament.

Iran’s ambassador to Australia, Ahmad Sadeghi, has been designated “persona non grata” by the Australian government and Australia’s embassy in Tehran will suspend operations. Iranian diplomats posted to Australia were not involved, Burgess said.

The Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson, Esmail Baghaei, reportedly said the allegations were “completely baseless” and warned that “any inappropriate diplomatic action will be answered in kind”.

In comments reported in Iranian news outlet Iran International, Baghaei claimed the sanctions were driven by domestic political pressure in Australia.

“Millions have protested in Australia against the genocide in Gaza,” he said. “This move against Iran, which is a move against diplomacy, appears to be compensation for the limited criticism Australia has directed at [Israel].”

Six diplomatic staff posted to Iran were moved to a third country before the announcement was made.

“These were extraordinary and dangerous acts of aggression orchestrated by a foreign nation on Australian soil,” Albanese said.

“They were attempts to undermine social cohesion and sow discord in our community. It is totally unacceptable.”

Albanese said told the lower house in question time on Tuesday that it was the “most serious response” any Australian government had given, adding “we don’t expel an ambassador lightly”.

Burgess said his agency was investigating other incidents for possible Iranian government involvement but did not believe Iran was involved in every act of antisemitism in Australia.

“It goes without saying that Iran’s actions are unacceptable. They put lives at risk, they terrified the community and they tore at our social fabric. Iran and its proxies lit the matches and fanned the flames,” he said.

“This was directed by the IRGC through a series of overseas cut-outs, facilitators, to coordinators that found their way to tasking Australians.”

Burgess said the alleged perpetrators were paid to make the attacks, and that it was aimed at “at messing with social cohesion”.

Speaking on ABC’s 7.30 program, Albanese said Asio had “clear evidence” linking individuals in the IRGC to what he described as acts of “foreign violence” against Australia.

When pressed on whether the government would seek to sanction those individuals, Albanese said: “We’ll take whatever action is appropriate.

“We speak about foreign interference. This is another level. This is foreign action and foreign violence being committed against Australians, funded and using criminal elements here,” he said.

The foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, said Iran’s actions warranted the first removal of a foreign ambassador to Canberra since the postwar period.

“That is why we have declared Iran’s ambassador to Australia persona non grata, as well as three other Iranian officials, and they will have seven days to leave the country,” Wong said.

Israel’s embassy welcomes Canberra decision

The opposition leader, Sussan Ley, said the Coalition was, in unison with the government, “disgusted to learn of the serious and chilling foreign interference which has been perpetrated by the Islamic Republic of Iran on Australian soil”.

“These acts of egregious foreign interference are brazen attempts to cleave apart our social cohesion,” she said.

Changes to the federal criminal code will be required to list the IRGC as a terror group, because the current legal regime for official designation only considers non-state groups.

Guardian Australia has contacted the Iranian embassy in Canberra.

Israel’s embassy in Canberra welcomed the decision, saying it was warranted.

“This is a step we have long advocated for … A strong and important move,” a spokesperson said.

In January, the Australian Federal Police commissioner, Reece Kershaw, told political leaders police were investigating whether criminals were being paid by foreign agitators based in the Middle East to whip up antisemitic hatred in Australia.

The Adass Israel synagogue was set ablaze in December, an incident the prime minister immediately labelled as an act of antisemitism.

The synagogue incident was among the first in a months-long wave of attacks against Australia’s Jewish community. In January, federal police said they were probing whether the attacks could be linked by a group of paid actors, or “criminals for hire”, rather than ideologically motivated offenders.

Two men have been arrested in relation to the synagogue fire bombing. In July, the AFP deputy commissioner for national security, Krissy Barrett, said the investigation was not contained to Australia, and that the AFP was “working closely” with Five Eyes and international partners.

The Iranian regime has previously been accused of engaging criminal gangs to carry out attacks overseas.

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said the Albanese government’s decision to support a UN resolution calling for an end to Israel’s occupation of Gaza was to blame for the December synagogue attack.

“It is impossible to separate this reprehensible act from the extreme anti-Israeli position of the Labor government in Australia,” he wrote on X.

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