Australia is so far taking a watch and wait approach on ratcheting tensions between the US and Iran, with the trade minister, Simon Birmingham, pleading for calm.
With presidents Donald Trump and Hassan Rouhani escalating their rhetoric against each other, traditional US allies have expressed concerns about entering “an accidental war”.
In the last 24 hours, Trump threatened Iran with “obliteration” while Rouhani labelled the US leader as suffering from a mental disorder.
....The wonderful Iranian people are suffering, and for no reason at all. Their leadership spends all of its money on Terror, and little on anything else. The U.S. has not forgotten Iran’s use of IED’s & EFP’s (bombs), which killed 2000 Americans, and wounded many more...
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 25, 2019
....Iran’s very ignorant and insulting statement, put out today, only shows that they do not understand reality. Any attack by Iran on anything American will be met with great and overwhelming force. In some areas, overwhelming will mean obliteration. No more John Kerry & Obama!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 25, 2019
The British foreign minister and prime ministerial hopeful, Jeremy Hunt, told the House of Commons he did not anticipate the UK joining any military action, saying the Foreign Office was very concerned about the “risks of an accidental war”.
“The US is our closest ally – we talk to them the whole time, we consider any requests that they say carefully – but I cannot envisage any situation where they request or we agree to any moves to go to war,” Hunt said.
Like North Korea, Iran is expected to be a key topic of conversations between leaders at the Group of 20 in Japan this week, where Scott Morrison will meet Trump.
But while Australia was keeping a keen eye on the situation, Birmingham said, no decisions about future action – sanctions or otherwise – had yet been made.
“We have serious concerns around Iran’s destabilising behaviour,” Birmingham told ABC radio on Wednesday. “We urge calm from the Iranians in their response to at what at present are purely economic sanctions.
“But economic sanctions designed to influence the behaviour of a state to prevent them from the escalation of development of nuclear technologies, and military activities and terrorism activities that could well undermine the peace and prosperity of the rest of the world.”
Australia maintains the sanctions the UN security council placed on Iran, as well as autonomous sanctions around goods and services, including arms and some metals.
In May 2018 the US reinstated all previous sanctions it had placed on Iran after Trump withdrew the US from the joint comprehensive plan of action set up under the Obama administration.
Birmingham said Australia continued to review its sanctions.
Labor’s deputy leader, Richard Marles, said he believed any move by Australia would “have to be considered very carefully” but he shared Birmingham’s concerns about Iran and destabilisation in the region.
“In terms of the rhetoric, I think we’ve seen this before and I tend to judge based on actions, rather than words what’s going on with the American administration,” he told the ABC.
“Obviously this rhetoric is concerning – but the actions of Iran have been concerning. That said, we need to move forward in a very sober and measured way here. And it’s important to understand exactly, what is, if anything, being asked of Australia.
“That’s the briefing we have sought from the government and we’ll be getting that next week.”
