Australia Weighs Request From Gulf Nations for Navy Help

(Bloomberg) — Australia said it is assessing a request from Gulf nations for defensive military support to protect them against Iranian drone and missile attacks.

“We have been asked for assistance, and we will work through that carefully,” Foreign Minister Penny Wong said on ABC’s Insiders program on Sunday, adding Australia won’t take part in offensive action or deploy ground troops in Iran.

The week-long US-Israeli war against Iran is reverberating worldwide, snarling up both energy supplies and air transport. Wong said 115,000 Australians are in the region, stoking an unprecedented consular crisis.

The US will consider strikes on areas and groups of people in Iran that were not earlier viewed as targets, President Donald Trump said in a social media post on Saturday. Tehran has attacked Israel and Gulf states hosting American forces, part of a broadening conflict that has sucked over a dozen nations into the fray.

Wong declined to say what sort of military support Australia might provide to Gulf countries, while pledging transparency if a decision is made.

On Friday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said three Australian Defence Force personnel were among the crew of a US submarine that torpedoed and sank an Iranian vessel in the Indian Ocean. None were involved in operations related to the attack, according to the prime minister.

Albanese on Friday reiterated his government’s support for US strikes on Iran, arguing the Islamic Republic posed a threat on multiple fronts, including its domestic human rights record, nuclear ambitions and long-standing support for proxy groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis in Yemen. 

The prime minister also pointed to antisemitic attacks in Australia that the nation’s spy agency attributed to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which led Canberra to expel Iran’s ambassador and close its embassy in Tehran.

“We support action to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, and we support action to prevent Iran from continuing to threaten international peace and security,” Wong said on Insiders.

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