Greens slam Labor for 'providing political cover' amid US-Israeli strikes on Iran
- Penny Hoffmann
- 9 minutes ago
- 3 min read
Missile strikes continue in Tehran, Iran, after the death of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and senior figures.
Greens senator David Shoebridge has hit out at the Albanese Government for "providing political cover" for the US-Israeli strikes on Iran, describing it as a war "based on lies and deceit".
6 News chief anchor Leo Puglisi spoke with Senator Shoebridge on March second to discuss Australia’s involvement in the US-Israel war against Iran.
Shoebridge said his immediate reaction to the first 48 hours of the bombing attack that played out last weekend was “distress”.
“Yet another bombing campaign against yet another country in the Middle East,” Shoebridge said.
“I suppose, as well, the sense of this just repetitive nature of it, these forever wars that the United States seems to be engaged in in this part of the world.”
“That exhaustion and emotional distress that I think so many people are feeling about yet another US war.”
Shoebridge said Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was “desperately keen to associate Labor with this attack on Iran” and that the Labor Party was the “first government in the world to back this latest illegal war by Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump”, very soon after US President Donald Trump confirmed that America was involved.
“Australia should not be joining [the war],” Shoebridge said.
“But [Albanese], you know, clearly bypassed any sensible process, obviously bypassed parliament and was the first country in the world to welcome Donald Trump's latest war.”
“It goes to show just how far Labor has come adrift from any sense of principle [or] support for multilateralism and international law.”
Defence Minister Richard Marles denied that Australia provides practical intelligence support to the US.
But Shoebridge disagrees, telling 6 News that the practical intelligence support is even happening now in the US-Israel attacks on Iran.
“For Richard Miles to say that, oh, ‘Australia is not providing direct support”, I mean, why does the US military have Pine Gap,” Shoebridge said.
“They have Pine Gap in order to analyse the information and target bombs and missiles from the United States and it’s allies, including Israel.”
“For Labor to pretend otherwise, does them no credit. But worse than that, [Pine Gap] is part of their general response to the presence of US nuclear weapons here, the position on international law, the use of these joint bases.”
Shoebridge said the best course of action Australia could have done was to “not support the illegal war that kicked off this inevitable regional destabilisation and violence”.
“They are backing an illegal war from two nations that have a strong and bloody history of illegal wars,” he said.
“They are using the fig leaf that it’s to prevent Iran’s nuclear weapons program maturing… no credible, international expert said that that was on the verge of threatening to become a viable nuclear weapons project.”
Shoebridge said there are two possible outcomes that he thinks are the biggest concern about the future of the US-Israel war against Iran.
“The regime will lurch even more to the right, even harder in its efforts to crack down,” he said.
“[Or] they have a near monopoly of violence inside Iran, and they will likely continue to use that.”
“Or, it may just descend into utter chaos like what happened in Iraq.. like what happened in Libya where US intervention led to decades of instability, countless civilian deaths, people’s futures and countries’ futures being destroyed.”
Last weekend, the United States and Israel continued to strike Tehran and other cities after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameni and top commanders were killed in Tehran at the start of the war on Saturday.
A clerical body called the Assembly of Experts was tasked with selecting the next Supreme Leader.
This tradition emerged from laws put into motion after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
This morning, Ali Khamenei's son Mojtaba was chosen as Iran's new supreme leader.