Australia backs Trump on Iran, says regime ‘has a choice'
Australia's chief diplomat is backing Donald Trump's stance on Iran, saying the Islamic republic 'has a choice' as the US President mulls American intervention.
Mr Trump overnight said he still had not decided if he would order a US strike on Iran but that his patience with the regime had 'already run out'.
It came after he demanded Iran give up its nuclear program and unconditionally surrender.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong said on Thursday 'the world faces a dangerous moment'.
'We know that conflict in the Middle East historically has led to instability, to security risks beyond the region,' Senator Wong told Seven.
'First, we agree with president Trump that nothing is too late.
'Iran has a choice here, and the choice should be to return to the table and engage in dialogue and diplomacy.
'We see the situation there and as tough as their words might be, I think we all know the situation that they face and it's time for them to return to the table.'
She warned there was a 'risk of regional escalation of this conflict getting larger, spreading, the consequences for all the people's of the region and more broadly the globe'.
Israel and Iran continued trading deadly strikes into the early hours of Thursday.
The week-long fighting has caused civilian deaths on both sides.
About 2700 Australians and their close family members have requested government help to evacuate – a challenge as airspaces remain closed in the region.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has vowed to pulverise Israel.
But with many of Iran's most senior military officials and nuclear scientists dead and most of its key uranium enrichment facilities severely damaged, it is unclear how much longer his regime can continue.
An emergency UN Security Council meeting has been scheduled for Friday.
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AU Financial Review
an hour ago
- AU Financial Review
US reportedly preparing for possible weekend Iran strike
The conflict between Israel and Iran has spilled over into the digital world. On Tuesday, a pro-Israel hacking group claimed responsibility for a disruptive cyberattack against a major Iranian bank, and Iran's state-run IRIB News reported that Israel had launched a full-scale cyberattack on the country's critical infrastructure. Then on Wednesday, the pro-Israel hackers announced a new breach targeting an Iranian crypto exchange. Predatory Sparrow's claims that it hacked Iran's Bank Sepah and Iranian crypto exchange Nobitex are the latest manifestation of that digital tit-for-tat. And on Thursday, there were reports that the state-run TV was hacked.
Sydney Morning Herald
an hour ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
US strike on Iran would bring peril at every turn
Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a defiant response to Trump's call for 'unconditional surrender', but Trump said there were indications that the Iranians wanted to talk. There were also reports of an official Iranian plane landing in Oman, where many of the negotiations with Steve Witkoff, the president's special envoy, had taken place before Israel's attack. If Trump is taking a pause, it may be because the list of things that could go wrong is long, and probably incomplete. There's the obvious: It's possible that a B-2 could get shot down, despite Israel's success in taking out so many of Iran's air defences. It's possible the calculations are wrong, and even America's biggest conventional bomb can't get down that deep. 'I've been there, it's half a mile underground,' Rafael Grossi, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said last week, as the Israeli operation began. But assuming that the operation itself is successful, the largest perils may lie in the aftermath, many experts say, just as they did in Afghanistan and Iraq. There are many lessons from that ugly era of misbegotten American foreign policy, but the most vital may be that it's the unknown unknowns that can come back to bite. Iran has vowed that if attacked by US forces, it would strike back, presumably against the US bases spread around the Middle East and the growing number of assets gathering in the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean. All are within missile range, assuming Iran has missiles and launchers left after the Israelis are done with their systematic targeting. Of course, that could start a cycle of escalation: If Americans are killed, or even injured, Trump will be under pressure to exact revenge. 'Subcontracting the Fordow job would put the United States in Iran's sights,' Daniel Kurtzer, a former US ambassador to Israel, and Steven Simon, a veteran of the National Security Council, wrote in Foreign Affairs this week. 'Iran would almost certainly retaliate by killing American civilians. That, in turn, would compel the United States to reciprocate. 'Soon enough, the only targets left for Washington to hit would be the Iranian regime's leaders, and the United States would again go into the regime-change business – a business in which exceedingly few Americans want to be involved any longer.' The reaction could take other forms. Iran is skilled at terrorism, and reacted to the US-Israeli cyberattack on its nuclear program 15 years ago by building a fearsome cyber corps – not as stealthy as China's or as bold as Russia's, but capable of considerable damage. And it has plenty of short-range missiles left to attack oil tankers, making transit in the Persian Gulf too risky. The last thing the White House wants to do is air these risks in public. Democrats are calling for a congressional role, but they have no power to compel it. 'Given the potential for escalation, we must be brought into this decision,' Senator Adam Schiff of California, one of Trump's political rivals, said on CNN on Wednesday. 'Bombing Fordow would be an offensive activity.' And like most offensive activities, there are longer-term perils, beyond the cycle of attack and retaliation. Already the message of these past five days, as interpreted by Iranian leaders or others with nuclear skill, may well be that they should have raced for a bomb earlier, and more stealthily. That was what North Korea did, and it has now ended up with 60 or more nuclear weapons, despite years of American diplomacy and sabotage. It is a big enough arsenal to assure that its adversaries, South Korea and the US, would think twice about conducting the kind of operation that Israel executed against Iran. And history suggests that nuclear programs can be bombed, but not eliminated. 'Nuclear weapons can be stopped through force – the Syrian program is a good example,' said Gary Samore, who was the Obama administration's co-ordinator for weapons of mass destruction when the existence of the Fordow plant was made public. And in Iraq, after the Israelis bombed the Osirak reactor in 1981, to keep Saddam Hussein from getting the fuel for a bomb, the Iraqis 'reacted by building a huge, secret program' that went undetected until after the Gulf War in 1991, Samore said. That was such an embarrassment to American intelligence agencies that more than a decade later they wildly overestimated his ability to do it again, contributing to the second failure – and leading the US into the Iraq War. But Samore added: 'I can't think of a case where air power alone was sufficient to end a program.' That is an important consideration for Trump. He must decide in the next few days whether Israel's attacks on Iran's Natanz enrichment facility, and its bombing of workshops where new centrifuges are made and laboratories where weapons research may have been taking place, are sufficient to set back the Iranian program. In short, he must decide whether it is worth the huge risk of direct US involvement for whatever gain would come from destroying Fordow with American pilots, American warplanes and American weapons. But he also doesn't want to be accused of missing the chance to set the Iranians back by years. 'If this war ends and this Fordow is left intact, then it wouldn't take long to get this going again,' said Samore, now a professor at Brandeis University. Trump has not weighed these questions in public, and it is always hard to know how he is assessing the evidence. He bristled the other day when a reporter noted to him that his own director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, had testified in Congress just a few months ago that Iran had made no decision to produce a bomb. Loading Trump insisted that there wasn't much time left – though he cited no evidence to contradict his own intelligence chief. 'Don't forget, we haven't been fighting,' Trump said on Wednesday in the Oval Office. 'We add a certain amount of genius to everything, but we haven't been fighting at all. Israel's done a very good job today.' Then, muddying the waters anew, he turned to his signature phrase: 'But we'll see what happens.'
ABC News
an hour ago
- ABC News
Los Angeles Police Department and the protest that shifted from peaceful to 'unlawful'
The day had been peaceful. As 30,000 people marched through Los Angeles as part of the nationwide No Kings protests, the streets were busy with children, families, their pet dogs, medics and people giving out water and snacks. But as protests across the country wound down, the one in Los Angeles changed shape. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass made the point the large morning demonstrations were "overwhelmingly peaceful". She said the tension across the afternoon came when law enforcement was forced to move along the "stragglers". At a federal building just a few blocks from City Hall, United States Marines and National Guard troops were in place. By mid-afternoon, a crowd had formed and the tone was very different from that of the morning demonstrations. What played out over the following hours was a case study of the way a stand-off can spark and turn a tinderbox into a raging fire. The protesters' anger was for Donald Trump and his immigration raids being carried out by the federal agency Immigration, Customs and Enforcement (ICE). The federal building guarded by Donald Trump's troops has been at the centre of protests in Los Angeles. ( ABC News: Emily Clark ) The mayor said the crowds across Los Angeles were "overwhelmingly peaceful". ( ABC News: Emily Clark ) It was the commander-in-chief's decision to federalise the National Guard and deploy marines to help patrol the protests. But it was local police units that would eventually disperse the crowd with tear gas, flashbang grenades and rubber bullets. While onlookers screamed "peaceful protest", various units from the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department (LASD) used the "less-lethal" force available to them to move on those they called "the agitators". In the haze of gas and smoke, it can be hard to make sense of the chaos. This is what it looks like when a progressive city in Trump's America is forced to turn on itself. Holding the line From mid-afternoon, a crowd had once again gathered at the Edward R Roybal Federal Building, which was being guarded by members of the Marines and National Guard. Troops, as well as LAPD and LASD officers, were standing in line formations across the building's entrance. Standing shoulder-to-shoulder and, at some points, multiple layers deep, the troops and police officers were at times less than a metre from the front of the crowd. US Marine Corps troops as well as Los Angeles law enforcement officers push back the crowd. ( ABC News: Emily Clark ) The National Guard troops were federalised by Donald Trump and deployed to Los Angeles despite opposition from state officials. ( ABC News: Emily Clark ) In that crowd was Aileen Rivera, 18, whose family was from Mexico. "We're here to tell them to get out and that they shouldn't be holding guns here if there's peaceful protest," she said. "I think it's a little unnecessary. They're just wanting to scare us and intimidate people from speaking out, but that's not going to happen," she said. About the evening ahead, Ms Rivera said she was "scared, honestly". "They tend to take things really far — protesters and police officers — and then people get hurt and people go to jail when it's unnecessary, when we just want to send out our messages peacefully." For hours after the No Kings protests, the demonstration at the federal building slowly built, and as the crowd swelled, it pushed ever so slightly forward. At that moment, the marines drove them back. The crowd responded — loud, disapproving and heightened. From a high position in a nearby garden, it was possible to see the entire scene. And zoom in on the moment the marines moved toward the anti-ICE crowd. This is the point of tension in the protest where the two sides come together and the potential for escalation exists. At this moment, the crowd was loud and outraged. The marines can be seen getting closer to the protesters, putting distance between them and the building's entrance. That looks like a Trump flag, but make no mistake, it is a "F**k Trump" flag. Right at this point in the crowd were activists who were trying to engage the people standing in military uniforms, asking them if they believed in what they were doing. These troops are on the ground in Los Angeles because Trump believed the city would have "burned to the ground" without them. Local officials said they were never necessary. Los Angeles Police Department sirens were blaring across the city for hours after this moment. But here, its officers are sprinkled throughout the troops, helping to hold the skirmish line. The LAPD and the LASD deployed SWAT, mounted units, highway patrol and police helicopters to the event. Looking around the scene a little more. We can learn more about who is in the crowd and the people and groups these events attract. The upside-down American flag, while it is a Trumpian reference too, has historically been flown as a distress signal. The flag of Mexico and the California State flag were everywhere throughout the Los Angeles protests. And this is the anti-fascist action flag — one sometimes flown as the flag of Antifa. The road here becomes important because eventually, cars park across it. People stand on their roofs and hang from their windows. The crowd builds around them and eventually, the LAPD declares "the demonstration has taken the street" and a dispersal order is issued. From there, the dynamic completely shifts and the law enforcement on the scene have authority to use "less-lethal" methods to clear the crowd. And they do. The dispersal order "A dispersal order has been issued on Los Angeles St between Aliso and Temple. People in the crowd are throwing rocks, bricks, bottles and other objects. "Less lethal has been approved. Less lethal may cause discomfort and pain. It is advised that all persons leave the area." Once law enforcement had approval to disperse the crowd and authority to use less-lethal methods to do it, the intersection was flooded with different units of the LAPD and LASD. LASD units arrived in people carriers, as mounted units arrived too. The highway patrol units that had been waiting to the side of the building and down the highway on and off ramps, now formed new skirmish lines across the central street. Moments after a mounted unit arrived at the overpass, the first round of what those present reported as feeling like pepper spray was sprayed into a group of protesters after an apparent altercation with the horses. That movement drove part of the crowd one block to the east of the federal building. As some units drove protesters back, others shuffled in behind to form new skirmish lines and systematically pushed protesters out of the area. This was happening block-by-block, in several directions, and soon the constant sound of non-lethal rounds being fired was ringing out across the downtown Los Angeles area. In the "hot zone", the action feels like it is happening in every direction and the skirmish lines move quickly. The mood, and the crowd, appears completely different to that from the start of the day. LAPD officers form a skirmish line as law enforcement act on the dispersal order. ( ABC News: Emily Clark ) Multiple additional units from across LA law enforcement moved in once the dispersal order was in place. ( ABC News: Emily Clark ) The Los Angeles Sheriff's Department had units working across the downtown area, including mounted officers. ( ABC News: Emily Clark ) Aerial video from the scene shows some protesters throwing bottles at law enforcement and the ABC witnessed several protesters setting off fireworks in the area. For several hours, the LAPD account on X posted updates saying officers in the area were requesting assistance. LAPD chief Jim McDonnell said officers "started taking rocks, bottles" and other projectiles "from a high ground position" and at that point, "they deployed gas in order to disperse the group" and were successful. "They used some tactical manoeuvres as well, some flanking movements and moved the group out of there." At 5:00pm, three hours before curfew, the LAPD declared an "unlawful assembly", meaning those who failed to leave the area were subject to arrest. We now know that at 6:15pm, LAPD officers and other agencies were dispersing a crowd in the downtown area and a 27-year-old man broke through a skirmish line. An officer fired a single shot from a "less-lethal launcher" and the man sustained a "law enforcement-related injury" to the back of his head and was hospitalised, according to the LAPD. That use of force is now being investigated. At curfew, which only covers a small section of the downtown area, Chief McDonnell estimated there were still 1,000 protesters on the street across the city. He said the protest that started as US Marine Corps and National Guard units stood at the federal building had been dispersed, but as night fell, skirmish lines were popping up all over the city. He said it then became a game of "cat and mouse". In the "hot zone" of the Los Angeles protest, police fired less-lethal rounds into the crowd to disperse it. ( AP: Ethan Swope ) Police fired tear gas and other less-lethal rounds into crowds. Here, a protester has picked one up. ( AP: Noah Berger ) People move through tear gas during the protest. ( AP: Noah Berger ) The state of California is suing Donald Trump for deploying the National Guard, arguing it undermines its sovereignty and democracy more broadly. At the heart of the lawsuit is the issue of whether or not federal troops are participating in domestic law enforcement — something they are prohibited from doing without the president invoking the Insurrection Act. But here is the problem for Los Angeles. California Governor Gavin Newsom says the federal troops are escalating the situation and are part of the reason protesters show up. But as happened on Saturday, June 14, it is then up to local law enforcement to clean up the streets. A hearing in this case began on Tuesday, local time, and its outcome will impact whether Donald Trump can keep his troops on the street or if they have to go home. That is of course only part of the issue, because ICE raids are still happening across several cities in the state and across the country, with Donald Trump pledging to target the "Democratic power centre". Los Angeles does not spend resources on enforcing immigration law. That makes it what's called a "sanctuary city" — but also a political target. The No Kings movement and anti-ICE protesters are not the only signs of resistance across the city. Local businesses help warn customers if ICE is present, and advocates patrol the streets too, hoping to offer assistance if they encounter people being detained. On the day of the No Kings protest, 35 people would end up being arrested by the LAPD for curfew violations, as well as several other arrests for resisting arrest and obstructing police officers. LAPD said three officers were injured that day. By midnight, from down town there were still sounds of sirens, fireworks and non-lethal rounds being deployed somewhere across the sprawling city of Los Angeles.
