From false-flag claims to celebration: Iran's state media spin Sydney attack

"As a matter of principle, Iran condemns the violent attack against civilians in Sydney, Australia," Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baqaei said in a post on X.

"Terror violence and mass killing shall be condemned, wherever they're committed, as unlawful and criminal."

Eleven people were killed and 29 were taken to hospital after gunmen opened fire on Jewish people observing Hanukkah at Bondi Beach in Australia, New South Wales Police said.

One of the gunmen has been named as 24-year-old Naveed Akram, who was likely a Muslim man of Pakistani origin, a senior law enforcement official told ABC News.

Australian authorities are investigating whether Iran may be linked to the deadly shooting, according to a Jewish community leader cited by The Times of Israel.

In August, Australia accused Iran of two antisemitic arson attacks and ordered its ambassador to leave the country within seven days.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said intelligence gathered by the Australian Security Intelligence Organization showed Iran had directed attacks on a kosher restaurant in Sydney and a synagogue in Melbourne last year.

“These were extraordinary and dangerous acts of aggression orchestrated by a foreign nation on Australian soil,” Albanese told reporters at the time.

ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess said Iran had “sought to disguise its involvement,” but the agency assessed it was behind the attacks on the Lewis Continental Kitchen in Sydney on 20 October last year, and the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne on 6 December. He said Iran was “likely” behind further incidents targeting Jewish Australians.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and Russian President Vladimir Putin held talks on the sidelines of the International Forum for Peace and Trust in the capital Ashgabat, an unusual gathering in one of the world’s most closed states.

Putin said Moscow and Tehran remain in close contact on major international issues, including Iran’s nuclear program.

“We are in close contact on all key international issues, including all matters related to the Iranian nuclear program. You know our position: we support Iran at the UN,” Putin said, adding that the foreign ministers of the two countries are “in constant contact.”

He said Russia and Iran are negotiating cooperation in the gas and electricity sectors and will work together on energy transmission projects.

“We are holding talks in the gas and power sectors, and cooperation in energy transfer will take shape,” he said.

He added that relations between the two countries are expanding steadily. “Our relations are developing day by day,” Putin said, pointing to plans to advance the North–South transport corridor linking Russia to South Asia via Iran.

Putin also cited plans to expand cooperation at Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant, which was built by Russia.

Broader strategic ties

The meeting comes as Tehran and Moscow deepen strategic cooperation under Western sanctions. Earlier this month, the two countries signed a new agreement covering artificial intelligence and cybersecurity, expanding collaboration in digital infrastructure, data transit and e-government.

Iran and Russia have also worked closely on space projects. Tehran has said three Iranian satellites will be launched aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket later this month, following earlier launches carried out with Russian support.

“Foreign ministers of nations with brotherly and full diplomatic relations need no ‘neutral’ venue to meet,” Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi posted on X, referring to his counterpart Youssef Raji proposal to meet in a third country.

“His decision not to welcome Iran's reciprocation of his warm hospitality is bemusing,” Araghchi added.

Raji announced on Wednesday that he had declined an invitation to travel to Tehran as Beirut moves forward with its plan to disarm the Iran-backed Hezbollah movement.

Israel’s punishing strikes on Hezbollah in the final weeks of the year-long war that ended in November left the group weakened but still ensconced in traditional support bases in the country's south and east.

Lebanon’s government has since tasked the national army with confiscating Hezbollah’s arsenal by 2026—a move Iran opposes, arguing that continued Israeli attacks justify what it calls the group’s resistance.

“Subjected to Israeli occupation and blatant ‘ceasefire’ violations,” Araghchi wrote, “I fully understand why my esteemed Lebanese counterpart is not prepared to visit Tehran. Hence I will gladly accept his invitation to come to Beirut.”

Hezbollah debate

Iran invited Raji to Tehran earlier this month to discuss bilateral ties, according to Iran’s foreign ministry, amid mounting debate in Lebanon over the future of Hezbollah—which Iran helped found in 1982—and rising calls for the movement to surrender its weapons.

On Wednesday, Lebanon’s foreign ministry said on X that Raji turning down the visit “does not mean rejecting discussion,” but that “the favorable conditions are not available.”

He renewed an invitation for Araghchi to meet in “a neutral third country” and said Lebanon was ready for “a new phase” in relations based on sovereignty, non-interference, and exclusive state control over arms and national security decisions.

“Building any strong state cannot happen unless the state alone, through its national army, holds the exclusive right to carry arms and the sole authority over decisions of war and peace,” he said, adding that Araghchi remained welcome to visit Beirut.

Its operating model is neither innovative nor cohesive, but a set of pragmatic mechanisms built on three pillars: sanctions-evasion finance, covert oil lifelines and proxy leverage.

Beneath these pillars sits a twin base: China, the economic enabler which buys its oil, and Russia, a fellow bearer of stiff sanctions whose alignment offers diplomatic cover but also commercial competition.

With the aid of these two powers, the Islamic Republic survives not through mastery but through continual manoeuvre.

Understanding this architecture matters because it now shapes a broader convergence in global security. As the United States expands its military buildup in the Caribbean, Iran faces the potential loss of a Western Hemisphere partner long utilised by the Revolutionary Guards Quds Force.

Should Washington succeed in pulling Caracas away from Tehran, one more long-alleged sanctions evasion route may be blocked.

Sanctions evasion

Tehran continues to move funds with notable agility despite the so-called snapback of UN sanctions triggered by Western Europe in October and successive US-led actions to interdict missile and drone procurement networks.

Dubai, Istanbul, Muscat and Baghdad have been named as transit points in US Treasury press releases. Exchange houses and front companies facilitate conversions that allow restricted revenues to re-enter circulation.

Some networks targeted by Western authorities are alleged to have funnelled substantial sums to Hezbollah through opaque trade and currency channels.

These mechanisms define the Islamic Republic’s financial landscape.

Even so, these flows are tributaries. The main current runs east.

Chinese lifeline

The economic centre of the Islamic Republic increasingly lies in Shandong, Shanghai and the harbors of southern China.

Analysts estimate that roughly 80–90 percent of Iranian crude exports ultimately land in China, often routed through ship-to-ship transfers, re-flagged vessels and blends labelled as Malaysian, Omani or others.

These operations appear in tanker-tracking data and in recent investigations highlighting the Revolutionary Guards tightening oversight of a global shadow fleet.

For Beijing, the rationale is straightforward: discounted supplies, insulation from Western price caps and evidence that sanctions enforcement is no longer uniform. For Tehran, the lifeline underscores deepening dependence on a far more powerful state.

Russia’s role differs. Also under sanctions, Moscow competes directly with Tehran for China’s crude demand while simultaneously normalising sanctions-defiance as a geopolitical posture.

Two sanctioned exporters move in parallel: rivals commercially, yet aligned in resisting Western leverage.

Armed allis

Armed groups in Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen remain central to Tehran’s deterrence and diplomacy. They function, in effect, as strategic currency.

Western intelligence assessments circulated this year suggest Tehran transferred around one billion dollars to Hezbollah—an unusually high figure under any sanctions regime.

While details of the financial conduits remain incomplete, defence officials say Hezbollah is rearming despite the 2024 ceasefire, while Lebanon’s armed forces lack the capacity to enforce disarmament provisions. This comes as Israel maintains outposts in the country and launches deadly air strikes it says target militants.

In this environment, Iranian support is not merely financial but structural.

The Houthis continue to grow more assertive. Their maritime disruptions and drone activity reflect a movement whose operational confidence increasingly exceeds Tehran’s ability to shape or restrain it.

Europe’s reassessment

Europe, long divided over Iran, has entered a period of strategic recalibration. Tehran’s supply of Shahed-series drones to Russia has shifted its significance from a regional issue to a European security concern.

Western officials now warn that such transfers pose direct risks to continental defence.

Germany’s deployment of the Arrow-3 air-defence system—developed jointly with Israel—reflects the jitters. Senior officials from Ukraine and Israel met last week to coordinate responses to Iran’s expanding missile and drone proliferation.

European scrutiny has also grown over Iranian cultural, religious and financial centres suspected of facilitating sanctions evasion or money-laundering.

What was once treated as a bilateral nuisance is now cast as a collective security challenge.

A strained machinery

Thus stands the Islamic Republic in 2025: its revenues routed through offshore channels, its diplomacy reinforced by Russia, its economy dependent on China, its proxies potent but increasingly difficult to manage, and its domestic legitimacy fragile.

It survives on a framework effective in the short term but vulnerable in the long run.

Historical parallels caution that states relying on improvised economic lifelines and brittle alliances can appear stable until stresses accumulate beyond what the system can absorb.

These comparisons do not determine Iran’s trajectory, but they underline that a state held together by constrained revenues and external dependence is off balance and inherently unstable.

The 86-year-old theocrat styles himself a divinely-appointed protector of the oppressed worldwide and his remarks were couched as a general description of how weaker nations are usurped by more powerful ones led by the United States.

Speaking at a ceremony marking the birth anniversary of Fatemeh Zahra — the daughter of the Prophet Mohammad and a revered figure in Shia Islam — Khamenei said the motives behind what he called hegemonic pressure differ across regions.

“Sometimes it is about expanding territory,” he said, pointing to “what the Americans are doing with some Latin American countries.”

Western designs can also aim at extracting commodities," he said. “They apply pressure so they can take a country’s underground resources — its oil, for example."

Iran's relationship with Washington and Western Europe is at a low ebb since the United States joined a surprise Israeli military offensive against the country in June.

Britain, France and Germany then triggered the reimposition of international sanctions which have throttled Iran's already ailing economy.

Khamenei’s remarks came a day after the United States seized a Venezuela-linked tanker accused of transporting sanctioned Iranian and Venezuelan oil.

Washington says the tanker was part of a network tied to Hezbollah and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

Iran’s embassy in Caracas condemned the operation as an illegal act, calling it “robbery in the Caribbean Sea” and a violation of international maritime law.

US forces have mounted the largest buildup of forces in the Caribbean since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis and President Donald Trump has suggested the policy aims at the removal of leftist populist President Nicolas Maduro and has vowed attacks on land.

US air strikes on alleged drug boats in the region have killed at least 87 people.

'Hearts and minds'

Khamenei added that Western states also push to “reshape cultural and religious life,” often by influencing lifestyles and social norms through media. “They try to change how people live, think and believe,” he said.

But he said the most consequential objective is what he described as an engineered identity transformation. “More fundamental than all of these is the effort to change a nation’s identity,” he said.

Iranian officials accuse the West of seeking to foment sedition and rebellion in the country including by fomenting opposition to mandatory veiling laws for women.

The death of a young woman, Mahsa Amini, in morality police custody in 2022 led to nationwide protests dubbed the Woman, Life, Freedom movement which were quashed with deadly force.

Khamenei added that attempts to alter Iran’s cultural and religious foundations stretch back a century. “For a hundred years they have tried to rewrite who we are — our religion, our history, our culture,” he said. “The Islamic Revolution cleared that away, but the pressure continues. And resisting this pressure is essential.”

Khamenei said Iran is progressing despite economic and political pressures. “By God’s grace, the Islamic Republic is moving forward,” he told the audience of religious reciters. He said Iranians continue to show the world that Islam stands for “steadfastness, strength, honesty and justice.”

He also said the country faces a sustained “media and propaganda war” aimed at undermining public morale. “The enemy learned it cannot gain this land through military pressure,” he said. “So it turned to changing hearts and minds. We are standing firm, but the threat is real.”