TEHRAN – The massacre at Australia’s Bondi Beach on December 14 was a moment of unadulterated horror. As gunmen opened fire at the “Chanukah by the Sea” celebration, killing at least 11 and wounding dozens more, a community was left shattered.

Yet, before the grief could even settle, the tragedy was seized upon by external hostile actors, transformed from a crime scene into a geopolitical weapon.

To understand the strategic utility of this attack, one must look at the months preceding it. Australia, once considered a loyal “British outpost” and a bastion of Zionist support, had undergone a seismic diplomatic shift.

Driven by public revulsion over Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza—manifested in massive protests that shut down the Sydney Harbour Bridge and mobilized hundreds of thousands across 40 cities—Australian Prime Minister Albanese’s government broke with tradition. On September 21, Australia officially recognized the State of Palestine.

For Tel Aviv and its allies, this was an intolerable betrayal, especially as Australia, a member of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, was joined by others such as France, the United Kingdom, and Canada.

Israeli officials lamented a rising “intifada in Australia,” and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that such policies would “pour fuel on antisemitic fire.”

The Bondi attack, arriving precisely when Israel’s diplomatic isolation was most acute, has conveniently served as the ultimate punitive measure—a “reset button” designed to shame Canberra back into line.

However, no amount of exploited grief from Bondi can cleanse the indelible stain on Netanyahu's hands. In just over two years, Israel‘s military campaigns have killed over 70,000 Palestinians in Gaza—tens of thousands of them children—a scale of devastation that no distant tragedy can obscure or justify.

The fabricated ‘Iran link’ vs. reality

Almost immediately, the machinery of disinformation roared to life. Anonymous leaks from the military-intelligence complex set Israeli outlets into overdrive, sparking a frantic round of accusations against Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas.

These contradictory narratives, devoid of consistent evidence, suggest a coordinated attempt to find a culprit that fits a political agenda rather than the facts.

The reality on the ground creates an insurmountable problem for this narrative. The identified attacker, Naveed Akram, has a digital footprint that points decisively toward Salafi-Jihadist ideology—a worldview that is violently hostile to the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Shia faith.

A 2022 Facebook post shows Akram studying under a Salafi teacher, with books by hardline Wahhabi scholars like Bin Baz and Al-Uthaymeen visible in the background.

Even the anti-Iran outlet IntelliTimes admitted the profile was of an “organized attack sponsored by a jihadist arm... inspired by ISIS.”

Blaming Tehran for an attack rooted in the ideology of its sworn enemies—responsible for thousands of Iranian deaths—is not only illogical but a calculated smear.

It exploits the tragedy to fuel Iranophobia, distracting from the fact that the perpetrators adhere to the same extremism that Iran has fought against for decades.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry explicitly condemned the attack, stating that “terrorism and the killing of human beings, wherever it occurs, is unacceptable.”

False flags and con jobs

The swiftness with which Israel capitalized on the attack raises darker questions about its origins. We cannot ignore the historical doctrine of deception utilized by Israeli intelligence to shift international alliances.

The 1954 Lavon Affair saw Israeli agents bombing American and British targets in Egypt to frame Muslims.

The 1967 assault on the USS Liberty was a deliberate attempt to sink an American ship and blame Egypt to draw the U.S. into war, killing 34 crew members and wounding 171 others.

The King David Hotel bombing in 1946 saw Zionist militants disguised as Arabs slaughter 91 people to destroy incriminating documents.

Is Australia the latest theater for such operations. The context suggests it is possible. Months prior to the attack, Israel instigated the closure of the Iranian embassy in Canberra, based on ASIO claims of “Iranian-directed” plots.

Yet, NSW Police later revealed that subsequent investigations into “antisemitic” incidents found no foreign interference, labeling many of them fabricated “criminal con jobs.”

The embassy closure now appears to have been a preemptive diplomatic strike—removing Iranian oversight and diplomatic channels based on intelligence that turned out to be hollow.

The heroism that shattered the narrative

Perhaps the most potent rebuttal to Netanyahu’s incendiary “civilizational war” rhetoric is the identity of the attack’s hero.

Ahmed al Ahmed, a 43-year-old Muslim father of two, risked his life to charge the gunman, wrestling away his rifle despite sustaining serious gunshot wounds. Now recovering in hospital, his actions—captured on widely circulated footage and praised by many—saved countless lives.

In a moment of profound irony, Netanyahu, notorious for spreading the “cancer” of Islamophobia for decades, praised the “Jew who pounces on one of the murderers,” unknowingly hailing a Muslim man, though he later corrected himself.

Ahmed’s courage cuts against the Islamophobia that the attack is being exploited to spread.

Australians, having marched for Palestinian humanity, know too well the importance of resisting grief’s conversion into hatred.

True moral clarity condemns violence wherever it occurs—against Jewish civilians in Sydney and against Palestinian civilians in Gaza—while rejecting sinister narratives that seek to inflame division.

By Garsha Vazirian