Iran’s former ambassador to Australia – now persona non grata – has denied allegations his government was behind two antisemitic arson attacks in Australia, describing the accusations as “baseless” as he left the country.
Ahmad Sadeghi faced media questioning at Sydney airport before boarding a flight out of Australia.
On Tuesday, the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said Iran’s paramilitary Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was ultimately behind two antisemitic arson attacks last year: one on the Lewis Continental Kitchen in Bondi and another on the Adass Israel synagogue in Melbourne. There were no injuries in either attack.
The federal government has expelled Sadeghi – the first such expulsion since the second world war – and will move to prescribe the IRGC as a terrorist organisation. There was no accusation current Iranian diplomats or embassy staff were involved.
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Sadeghi described Australia’s accusations as “baseless allegations” and reiterated that Iran has a large Jewish community, seeking to counter criticism that Iran has long sponsored antisemitic attacks overseas via proxy forces.
Sadeghi said that the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (Asio) assessment that Iranian government officials were ultimately responsible for the arson attacks was the result of a “misunderstanding between Australia and Iran”.
He also proffered that the allegation had likely emerged from a “conspiracy against our friendly relations with Australia”.
Sadeghi insisted that, despite the tumult of his departure, he had enjoyed his posting in Canberra.
“I love Australian people,” he said.
Australia expels Iranian ambassador over evidence Iran directed antisemitic attacks – video
Asio said it had “credible intelligence” that the IRGC was ultimately behind the arson attacks – planning and funding the attacks through a series of intermediaries, including organised crime figures, but said it was “likely” Iran was behind more antisemitic attacks on Australian soil.
Following the expulsion of the ambassador, community leaders have said Australians of Iranian heritage faced verbal abuse and intimidation.
The local diaspora had been asking for the ambassador’s expulsion since 2022, following the regime’s crackdown on the women’s rights movement, the Australian Iranian Society of Victoria vice president, Kambiz Razmara, said.
He said there had been reports Australia’s Iranian community was being conflated with the actions of Iranian authorities.
“It is important for people to recognise that we, the Iranian diaspora, are opposed to what happens in Iran,” Razmara said.
“The Iranian diaspora, by and large, are here because they’re seeking freedom and social cohesion and freedom of expression and democracy, so anything that tarnishes that we are resolutely against.”
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The government had taken the right step after Iran’s “insidious, underhanded” work in destabilising Australian society, said David Andrews from the National Security College at the Australian National University.
On Australia’s relationship with Iran, Andrews said Canberra had in the past been able to conduct diplomacy on behalf of its friends and allies who did not have a mission in Tehran.
“[The expulsion] potentially puts that role at some risk,” he said.
Australia should expect some retaliation.
“The risk of people being used as political pawns, or people who have either dual citizenship or Australians passing through Iran, could be used as a point of leverage or sort of in response to this action,” Andrews said.
“There’s no one who will be rushing to try and repair those ties too actively.”
It’s estimated that between 3,000 and 4,000 Australians, or dual Australian-Iranian citizens, live in Iran.
The Australian government has a “do not travel” warning for Iran that advises Australian citizens they could be subject to arbitrary detention.
The Trump administration has approved the sale of 3,350 Extended Range Attack Munition (ERAM) missiles to Ukraine, providing a potentially powerful tool to Kyiv as it continues to face a relentless assault by Russia.
The announcement of the proposed $825 million sale Thursday comes as diplomatic efforts to end the war have yet to yield a result and following a deadly night of Russian strikes on the Ukrainian capital.
It was announced after President Donald Trump met this month with Russian President Vladimir Putin and separately with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Although the Trump administration has approved a number of sales of equipment to sustain existing weapons, this appears to be the first major arms sale of new weapons to Ukraine announced by the administration.
A source familiar said that if the sale is concluded as expected, the missiles – which have a range of 150-280 miles – could be delivered later this year.
It is unclear whether there will be restrictions on their use.
“Ukraine will use funding from Denmark, the Netherlands, and Norway and Foreign Military Financing from the United States for this purchase,” the notice from the State Department said. “The ERAM is an example of working together with our NATO allies to develop a capable and scalable system capable of being delivered on a fast timeline.”
“This proposed sale will support the foreign policy and national security objectives of the United States by improving the security of a partner country that is a force for political stability and economic progress in Europe,” it said.
Poland’s AirSHOW Radom 2025 cancelled following crash.
Published On 28 Aug 202528 Aug 2025
A Polish Army pilot has died after his F-16 jet crashed during preparations for an international airshow in Poland.
In a statement on Thursday, the General Command of the Armed Forces said that the accident involved an aircraft from the 31st Tactical Air Base near Poznan, western Poland. No bystanders were injured.
“A Polish Army pilot died in the crash of an F-16 aircraft – an officer who always served his country with dedication and great courage. I pay tribute to his memory,” Defence Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz wrote on X after arriving at the crash scene at Radom airport, in central Poland.
Firefighters rushed to the scene after the aircraft did not recover after barreling down the runway and hitting the ground. The accident happened at around 19:30 local time (17:30 GMT).
Video on social media showed the F-16 fighter jet nose-diving and then erupting into a ball of flames as it crashed during a practice session before this year’s Radom Air Show.
On the day that I visited Polish troops serving in Latvia, I was deeply saddened to learn of the loss of the Polish pilot of the F-16 killed during the demonstration flight this evening in Radom. My thoughts are with his family and comrade soldiers.
Local reports state that the pilot, part of an elite group of NATO air units known as “Tiger Demo”, was not seen ejecting from the plane before the crash.
The AirSHOW Radom 2025, which was due to take place this weekend, has been cancelled.
Poland first bought US-made F-16s, a jet key to NATO’s defence strategy, in 2003 and has since been in the process of upgrading its fleet amid its boosted defence spending in the wake of Russia’s 2023 invasion of neighbouring Ukraine.
🇮🇹🇵🇱 The Chief of Italian Defence, General #Portolano, expresses profound sorrow for the tragic loss of the Polish pilot who lost his life in the F-16 crash today.
On behalf of the Italian Armed Forces, General Portolano extends his deepest condolences to General #Kukula, to the… pic.twitter.com/Hw0jf5xjLV
— Forze Armate StatoMaggioreDifesa (@SM_Difesa) August 28, 2025
In a post on X, the Defence General Staff of Italy, a fellow NATO member, expressed “profound sorrow” following the crash.
Latvia’s minister of defence, who visited Polish troops stationed in the Eastern European country earlier on Thursday, also posted on X that he was “deeply saddened” by the death.
“My thoughts are with his family and comrade soldiers,” he said.
Prince Rahim Aga Khan V has begun an official visit to Kenya from 25 to 27 August?at the invitation of His Excellency President William Ruto.
This is his first official visit to East Africa, following his accession in February this year as the 50th?hereditary Imam of the Shia Ismaili Muslims.
He was received at State House on Wednesday by President Ruto, where the two discussed the long-standing warm relations between the Ismaili Imamat and Kenya and the priorities for future cooperation.
Prince Rahim and President Ruto signed an agreement to reaffirm the deep and long-standing partnership between the Ismaili Imamat and the Government of Kenya.
A Memorandum of Understanding on General Cooperation was also signed to deepen cooperation on issues such as environmental conservation, climate change, urban rehabilitation and cultural heritage.
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A video broadcast earlier this week captured the horrifying moment rescuers and journalists were killed in a “double-tap” strike on the Nasser hospital in southern Gaza. They had rushed to the scene of an initial Israeli attack, only for the same location to be bombed minutes later. Five journalists and several medical staff were killed by the second strike.
The attack prompted a wave of international condemnation. UK foreign secretary David Lammy wrote on social media: “Horrified by Israel’s attack on Nasser hospital. Civilians, healthcare workers and journalists must be protected. We need an immediate ceasefire”.
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, initially called the strikes a “tragic mishap”. He added: “Israel values the work of journalists, medical staff and all civilians”. But the strikes have now been characterised by Israel as a targeted attack on Hamas fighters.
An initial inquiry by Israel’s military says “it appears” its troops “identified a camera that was positioned by Hamas in the area of the Nasser hospital that was being used to observe the activity of IDF troops” in order to direct attacks against them.
Palestinians mourn the death of five journalists in the Nasser Hotel strike. More than 200 media workers have been killed in Gaza since the beginning of the war in October 2023. Rizek Abdeljawad/Xinhua/Alamy Live News
Whether or not charges relating to the attacks are ever brought remains to be seen. But James Sweeney of Lancaster University’s School of Law, believes there should be no doubt that the double tap tactic falls into the category of acts of war that are prohibited by the law of armed conflict.
Sweeney examines how international law operates in situations like this, identifying four fundamental rules on methods that govern the conduct of hostilities: humanity, necessity, distinction and proportionality.
He says the Israeli strikes almost certainly breached the rule on distinction, which requires that only lawful objectives should be targeted for attack. He explains that there are very limited circumstances in which a hospital or its medical staff could ever be a lawful target. The same goes for journalists. Both are protected under the Geneva Conventions.
Sweeney also sees Israel’s attack as violating the rule on proportionality, which says expected “collateral damage” should not be excessive to the expected military advantage of the attack. Even if the claim that the hospital was being used by Hamas to stage attacks on Israeli forces stands up, thus possibly making it a lawful target, the collateral damage was likely going to be vast.
Read more:
Was the ‘double tap’ attack on Gaza’s Nasser hospital a war crime? Here’s what the laws of war say
Excessive collateral damage has been a grim theme of the war. Israeli government officials consistently say their military works hard to keep civilian harm to a minimum, for example by making phone calls and sending text messages to those residing in buildings designated for attack.
However, Israel’s own numbers cast doubt on this claim. Figures from a classified Israeli military intelligence database, reported by the Guardian last week, indicate that 83% of the Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in Gaza have been civilians. This is a rate of civilian killing far higher than other modern wars, says Neta Crawford of the University of Oxford.
Crawford, an expert on international relations, reports that western militaries began to take steps to minimise inadvertent harm to civilians after the Vietnam war in 1975. These practices, which include making collateral damage estimates prior to carrying out a strike, have not always been adhered to.
But when they have been followed, the rate of civilian killing has been reduced. In American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Crawford reports, civilian casualty rates were 68% and 26% respectively – far lower than in Gaza.
“Given the kind of war Israel is fighting – using large, indiscriminate weapons to destroy buildings and failing to distinguish between combatant and noncombatant – it has unsurprisingly produced high civilian casualty rates,” she says.
Read more:
Gaza: civilian death toll outpaces other modern wars
Peacekeeping in Lebanon
The UN security council, meanwhile, is voting today on whether to extend a long-running peacekeeping mission in Lebanon for one final time. Vanessa Newby and Chiara Ruffa of Monash University and Sciences Po respectively reported earlier this week that the mission, which has patrolled Lebanon’s southern border with Israel since 1978, is at risk of being discontinued.
The Trump administration wants to reduce US financial commitments to UN peacekeeping. It argues that expensive and longstanding missions should be downsized to cut costs. Israel has, at the same time, insisted that the mission has been ineffective in addressing the existential threat posed by Hezbollah.
Newby and Ruffa are critical of this latter assessment. They write that the mission’s mandate has never been to disarm Hezbollah directly. Instead, it is tasked with creating and maintaining a space free of armed groups in southern Lebanon by supporting the Lebanese armed forces.
The council is reportedly expected to adopt a French draft resolution that sees the operation continue until the end of 2026. It will then begin a year-long “orderly and safe drawdown and withdrawal” – a compromise with the US.
This is a welcome outcome. Dismantling the peacekeeping mission would, in Newby and Ruffa’s view, create a dangerous security vacuum along the Israeli-Lebanese border.
Lebanon’s army remains weak, so a sudden withdrawal risks a surge in Hezbollah activity in the south. This would increase the prospect of another direct conflict between Hezbollah and Israel, they say, and another Israeli invasion of Lebanon.
Read more:
US and Israel push to end UN peacekeeping mandate in south Lebanon risks regional chaos
‘Fortress belt’
Russia is continuing to pound Ukrainian towns and cities, most recently launching strikes on Kyiv that killed at least 17 people. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has accused Moscow of choosing “ballistics instead of the negotiating table”, while UK prime minister Keir Starmer says Russia’s continuing attacks are “sabotaging hopes of peace”.
Talks on ending the war have been taking place for several weeks, though there has been no breakthrough. Russian leader Vladimir Putin is demanding that Kyiv cede control of the entirety of its Donetsk oblast, a region in eastern Ukraine, to Russia.
The Trump administration, keen for the war to end, seems to back this idea. When asked a question recently about Russia keeping territory it has seized, vice-president J.D. Vance remarked that “every major conflict in human history” has ended “with some kind of negotiation. Chris Smith, a historian at Coventry University, interrogates the truth of this claim here.
Read more:
J.D. Vance is wrong about history – here’s why this matters for Ukraine
Kyiv is unsurprisingly resistant to Putin’s demands. Rod Thornton and Marina Miron, security experts at King’s College London, say this would effectively be tantamount to an acceptance of overall defeat for Ukraine. Kyiv would be giving up its principal defensive barrier against further Russian encroachment into the rest of the country.
Ukrainian rescue workers at the site of a Russian strike on a residential building in Kyiv on August 28. Sergey Dolzhenko / EPA
Thornton and Miron stress the strategic importance of Ukraine’s so-called “fortress belt” – the name given to the complex series of defensive lines established between towns and cities in the west of the Donetsk region. Russia has largely been unable to break through these lines, so has been prevented from surrounding any major urban area there.
Gaining control of western Donetsk is the key to winning the war, write Thornton and Miron. So Putin, unable to break through the fortress belt, is now trying to acquire it through a peace deal brokered with US assistance. This would settle the war, but in Russia’s favour.
Read more:
Forcing Zelensky to hand Putin Ukraine’s ‘fortress belt’ in Donetsk will lose it the war
Meanwhile a far larger belt of fortifications is taking shape across eastern Europe, as Russia’s neighbours race to protect themselves in light of the war in Ukraine. Natasha Lindstaedt, a specialist in authoritarian regimes at the University of Essex, believes the recent shift in US foreign policy and its telegraphed move away from being Europe’s security guarantor, has prompted countries including Finland, the Baltic states and Poland to take extra precautions.
As Lindstaedt explains, these border defences will be using the latest technology and early warning systems and artillery units. The project is going to require a high level of cooperation between these countries to ensure that there are no loopholes which could be exploited by a Russian offensive.
The hope is that all concerned have learned the lesson of the much-vaunted French Maginot Line, which Germany simply bypassed during the second world war.
Read more:
Why a new ‘iron curtain’ is being built across Europe. This time it’s to keep Russia out
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More than 6,000 South Sudanese refugees have left one of Kenya’s biggest refugee camps, the United Nations told AFP Thursday, as aid cuts force increasing food shortages.
The Kakuma refugee camp in northern Kenya is the east African nation’s second-largest and hosts roughly 300,000 people from South Sudan, Somalia, Uganda and Burundi.
Humanitarian groups are struggling, with violent protests breaking out last month due to reduced rations following massive cuts to aid from the United States and other donors.
Desperately poor South Sudan has struggled with years of instability and is currently on the verge of renewed civil war, driving refugees over the border.
“Since January, about 6,200 South Sudanese refugees have departed Kakuma and Kalobeyei,” another settlement adjoining it, the UN’s refugee agency (UNHCR) said in a statement emailed to AFP.
Between July and August 22 alone roughly 3,600 people — mainly women and children — left the sprawling camp, it said, “accounting for over half of all exits this year”.
“Actual numbers are likely higher, as many movements happen through informal crossings,” it said.
It added that the departures came in the context of “some 4,800 new arrivals” since January, however.
– Food aid cuts –
The UNHCR stressed that while the movements suggested a “developing trend”, the “departures cannot be attributed to one factor alone”.
However, the body noted the major shift began in July as the World Food Programme (WFP) began reducing rations, categorising refugees under a four-tier scale and limiting assistance to the two worst-off groups.
“Some refugees have expressed concerns about food assistance categorisation,” the UNHCR said, as well as the recent unrest.
“While the scale of recent movements is notable, such cross-border mobility is not new,” it stressed, adding that it would continue to “monitor the situation closely”.
“What we are witnessing is a direct result of global funding shortfalls,” the WFP said in a statement on X earlier on Thursday.
“Unless resources are urgently mobilised, more refugees will be forced into impossible choices: either endure hunger in camps or return to fragile situations back home,” it added.
An official with the Department for Refugee Services (DRS) in Kakuma, who asked not to be named as he was not permitted to speak with the press, told AFP many were returning to South Sudan.
And while many South Sudanese in Kakuma were known to leave and return, he said the current movements were “unusual”.
“It was orchestrated by the categorisation,” he said, a reference to the new assistance programme, noting that some of the South Sudanese community in Kakuma fell into the categories that did not qualify for aid.
Iran’s ambassador Ahmad Sadeghi, departing Sydney Airport on Thursday before an expulsion deadline, rejected as “lies” Australia’s accusation that Tehran directed antisemitic arson attacks in Sydney and Melbourne.
Australia gave Sadeghi 72 hours on Tuesday to leave the country, marking its first expulsion of an ambassador since World War Two. Three other Iranian embassy officials were ordered to depart within seven days.
Read More: Iran says killed 13 militants in restive southeast
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was briefed on Monday by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, which cited evidence of payments to criminals allegedly linking two attacks — on a synagogue and a kosher restaurant — to offshore individuals and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
“These are all baseless allegations and lies,” Sadeghi told reporters from local television networks Nine and Seven at Sydney Airport on Thursday evening.
Earlier in Canberra, Sadeghi stepped outside his residence to bid farewell. “I love Australian people, bye bye,” he said, waving to television cameras.
Australia has said it will designate Tehran’s IRGC as a terrorist organisation, joining the United States and Canada, which already blacklist the group.
Chinese President Xi Jinping will be flanked by leaders of some of the world’s most heavily sanctioned nations – Russia, North Korea, Iran and Myanmar – at a military parade next week in Beijing, in a show of solidarity against the West.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un will attend “Victory Day” parade on September 3, marking the end of World War Two after Japan’s formal surrender – the first time they have appeared in public alongside Xi.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian is also expected to be on the dais as tens of thousands of troops march through the Chinese capital, completing a quartet that Western political and economic analysts have described as the Axis of Upheaval.
Myanmar junta chief Min Aung Hlaing, who rarely travels abroad, will also attend, the Chinese foreign ministry said on Thursday.
Almost no Western leaders will be among the 26 foreign heads of state or government attending the parade, which political analysts say will demonstrate Xi’s influence over nations intent on reshaping the Western-led global order.
“Xi Jinping is trying to showcase that he is very strong, that he is still powerful and well received in China,” said Alfred Wu, Associate Professor, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore.
“When Xi was just a regional leader, he looked up to Putin, and saw the kind of leader he could learn from – and now he is a global leader. Having Kim alongside him, as well, highlights how Xi is now also a global leader.”
A loose coalition of states bent on reshaping the Western-led global order, the “Axis of Upheaval” has sought to undermine US interests, whether over Taiwan or by blocking shipping lanes, and sought to undermine Western sanctions by providing economic lifelines to each other, the analysts say.
The only Western heads of state or government attending the events in Beijing are Robert Fico, the prime minister of European Union member state Slovakia, and Aleksander Vucic, the president of Serbia.
Fico has been an opponent of sanctioning Russia for its war against Ukraine and has broken ranks with the EU by visiting Moscow. Vucic also visited Moscow in May and wants good relations with Russia and China, but says Serbia remains committed to joining the EU.
STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP
Russia, which Beijing counts as a strategic partner, has been hit by multiple rounds of Western sanctions imposed after its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, with its economy on the brink of slipping into recession.
Putin, wanted by the International Criminal Court over accusations of the war crime of illegally deporting hundreds of children from Ukraine, last travelled in China in 2024. He is largely ostracised by the West and avoided making major concessions over Ukraine as US President Donald Trump struggles to end the war there.
North Korea, a formal treaty ally of China’s, has been under United Nations Security Council sanctions since 2006 over its development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. Kim last visited China in January 2019.
China, the world’s second-largest economy, buys some 90% of Iran’s sanctioned oil exports, and continues to source rare earth metals critical to the manufacture of wind turbines, medical devices and electric vehicles from Myanmar.
Other leaders attending what will be one of China’s largest parades in years include Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko, Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto and South Korea’s National Assembly Speaker, Woo Won-shik, Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister Hong Lei told a press conference.
The United Nations will be represented by Under-Secretary-General Li Junhua, who previously served in various capacities at the Chinese foreign ministry, including time as the Chinese ambassador to Italy, San Marino and Myanmar.
Former Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama will attend the parade, Hong said. He did not mention any guests from Italy or Germany, the two other Axis Powers during World War Two.
