Israel-Iran conflict raises questions about Australia's relationship with the US

As the world holds its breath over Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu's arm wrestle about whether to drop US "bunker busters" on Iran's nuclear facilities, Australians have every right to feel confused and concerned.
Is this proof we've inadvertently yoked ourselves as a nation to the whims of madmen?
Does the US-Australia alliance — normally a source of national comfort — hide fearsome consequences? Will we be drawn into a new conflagration involving nuclear powers? Do we have a choice? Is our sovereignty at risk?
Or is there a logic to what Israel is doing against Tehran's nuclear program that serves the interests of Australians, even if we dislike the process? Disarming a dangerous regime accused of spreading terror around the world must surely be a good thing?
Either way, Richard Marles told 730 on Tuesday that "we are not a part of this conflict" in the Middle East even as the defence minister doggedly side-stepped questions from my colleague David Speers about the nature of our support for potential American involvement in Iran.
"Can I just clarify, is the US allowed to launch any missions from Australia's northern bases?," Speers asked.
"Well, again, there's a whole lot of speculation in all of that".
Not really. Are they allowed to or not?
"That's a simple question about what permission the US has regardless of what's happening right now," Speers pressed.
"Well, we have a system of full knowledge and concurrence in terms of the way in which any country operates from Australia and that includes the United States," Marles eventually explained.
The minister's choice of language was deliberate and strategic. And purposefully obtuse.
Having full "knowledge and concurrence" of what American military forces are doing on Australian soil sounds vaguely comforting.
In practice, it's a long way from what it might imply. Concurrence is not the same as "approval" or "consent" — both of which ascribe the granter an implicit and concrete veto.
Concurrence leaves open the possibility that Americans do what they want from their Australian-based assets, perhaps seeking forgiveness rather than permission.
Such questions and constructive ambiguity emerge every time an American administration signs up to war-fighting.
But this is not a normal American administration and these are not normal times. The notion this generation of Australians can stand as aloof observers of far-off events could soon be tested.
It was only on Monday that Marles triggered a frisson among the defence and strategic community when he stated that China's regional military build-up means "Australia's geography today is more relevant to great power contest than it has been at any point since the end of the Second World War, arguably at any point in our history".
At face value — the notion that Australia now has a great big target on its back — is stating the bleeding obvious.
But hearing it directly from an acting Labor prime minister is a significant escalation in rhetoric.
Marles was emphasising — in essence — that Australia's unique geography and the traditional tyranny of distance means the country does not need to spend what the Trump administration is demanding.
The problem, says Marles, is that the nation's strategic interests are in protecting global sea routes that supply Australia's fuels and export revenues.
"Our risk is not so much the invasion of the continent," Marles told a security forum in Parliament House hosted by News Corp on Monday.
"We are fortunate that we are an island nation surrounded by oceans.
"But on the other hand, we are deeply reliant on our sea lines of communication."
Almost all of our liquid fuels are imported by sea, he said, but also through export revenues.
"And so that is our strategic risk. It's the disruption of those sea lines," he said.
"It's the coercion that could result because of the disruption of such sea routes, it is that, and the stability of the region in which we live."
The cost of managing those risks is to work with the US on regional security. And to contribute elsewhere when called upon.
Anthony Albanese's frustrated attempts to have a meeting with Donald Trump at the G7 meeting in Canada this week have garnered much attention.
Claims of being "snubbed" by the US president are silly, given he did the same to other leaders, including India's Narendra Modi.
It's not obvious what benefit Albanese would have secured in Alberta either. Trump is in no mood to grant trade exemptions and any assurance about AUKUS is now subject to a Pentagon review.
Should the first meeting between the men occur in September, as the government is indicating, then both of those issues might have been resolved.
As the PM flies back to Australia, he is now considering whether to race off again next week to a NATO summit in The Hague, which Trump is expected to attend.
This poses at least two risks. Critics may accuse Albanese of starting to look desperate in his efforts to meet the president. Can Trump be relied upon to even show up?
And the prime minister would also be running headlong into Europe's debate about levels of military spending.
NATO boss Mark Rutte wants defence spending lifted to 5 per cent of gross domestic product — which would make Albanese's stated goal of 2.4 per cent look pretty lame.
For now, the government is arguing that it would be good to be in the NATO room given the level of global uncertainty.
But it has not yet explained to Australians what that looks like in reality. Will the US be using Australian bases in its strikes on Tehran, for instance, by providing re-fuelling services as appeared to be the case for long-range US bombings on Houthi targets last year?
Foreign Minister Penny Wong on Wednesday hardened her rhetoric against Iran's regime, having started the week urging the US and Israeli governments to show "restraint".
Wong said the "fastest way out of the danger" is for Iran to "come to the table and stop any nuclear weapons program".
"Ultimately, the Iranian regime has to make a decision about whether it is going to continue down a path that is so perilous.
"The point that we are at, I think we can all see that Iran needs to come back to the table and stop any program."
If the conflict erupts, many voters and no doubt parts of Labor's party room will fast become dissatisfied by Marles's "full knowledge and concurrence" explanation.
The term itself dates back to the early 1970s, when the Whitlam government was outraged to learn that America was using the North West Cape facility to communicate with nuclear-armed Polaris submarines in the Indian Ocean.
But it wasn't until the Hawke government that it was formalised in a 1988 treaty with the Reagan administration in relation to joint operations at Pine Gap.
In a speech to parliament in June 2013, then Labor defence minister Stephen Smith said full knowledge "equates to Australia having a full and detailed understanding of any capability or activity with a presence on Australian territory or making use of Australian assets".
'Concurrence' means Australia approves the presence of a capability or function in Australia in support of its mutually agreed goals."
Smith then added a critical caveat: "Concurrence does not mean that Australia approves every activity or tasking undertaken".
Defence officials and experts — on both sides of the alliance — are understood to be in the midst of a spirited debate about whether "full knowledge and concurrence" (FK&C for short) needs to be reworked in light of the deepening use of Australian soil and waters for US military activities.
It might have been enough to clarify things when the alliance was mostly about satellites and communications and over-the-horizon radar activities.
But a hot war in the Middle East involving heavy bombers and other things is something quite different.
Alex Bristow, senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute says the government would be "very reticent to get too directly embroiled in this conflict", though the Americans might request some level of support.
Bristow notes the Australian Defence Department took the "unusual step" of confirming an ABC story that Australia's northern bases likely supported air-to-air refueling operations for US B-2 stealth bombers flying from the continental US for missions against Houthi targets in October.
"Such bombers could play a key role in potential US strikes on Iran, as they can deliver large 'bunker-buster' bombs to hit underground targets that the Israelis would struggle to reach," he says.
Australia may be called upon in other ways, "like contributing to maritime security around the Middle East, or backfilling US capabilities nearer to Australia to free up US forces to deploy to the Middle East".
Marles's statement that "Australia's geography and continent would be crucial to any United States prosecution of a war against China will go down as a dark moment in Australia's history", said Paul Keating on Monday.
Accusing the Labor government of having "intellectually ceded Australia to the United States as a platform for the US" for "military engagement against the Chinese state", Keating warned that Labor's "grassroots will not support Australia being dragged into a war with and by the United States over Taiwan".
"The large majority of new members of the parliamentary Labor Party will not find community support for such a course of action," he said.
Keating's anger is not isolated.
Many continue to call for a proper debate over the terms and circumstances of America's involvement on our continent.
A debate that many believe should have been conducted in full when the Gillard government and Smith agreed with the Obama administration to allow US troops to rotate through a base in Darwin.

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ABC News

32 minutes ago

• ABC News

Financial markets weigh up conflict

Samantha Donovan: Investment analysts say the Israel-Iran conflict is seeing an uneasy calm on global financial markets. AMP's Shane Oliver helps manage billions of dollars for the superannuation firm AMP. He's told our business correspondent David Taylor that calm could disappear if Iran decides to close the Strait of Hormuz, a critical sea passage for the world's oil supply. Shane Oliver: The financial markets seem fairly relaxed about things. There was the initial knee-jerk reaction a week or so ago when the news struck that Israel had hit targets in Iran and that Iran was retaliating. So, you saw this initial knee-jerk reaction. Oil prices sort of rose from about $68 a barrel to $74 or thereabouts. Share markets came down a bit. Ever since then, they've sort of been treading water waiting to see what happens. Of course, at the back of everyone's mind, there's always this fear that we're going to see a rerun of what happened in 1973 or 1979. But most of the time, that doesn't happen. This time around, though, there's probably a bit more nervousness simply because Iran has potentially getting closer to nuclear capability, nuclear weapons capability, and of course, Israel is determined to wipe that out. So that's why the situation is a lot more tense this time around. But I think investors are still thinking, well, maybe it'll turn out OK and be a non-event. David Taylor: When Donald Trump says via the White House press secretary that he's simply going to make it as he wants an extension for two weeks, he's going to make a decision within two weeks or at the end of two weeks, you're the ANP's strategist for a lot of money, a lot of investments. When you hear something like that, what's your thought? Is your thought that he's stalling or is your thought that markets simply just have to wait day by day as to what's going to happen next? Shane Oliver: Yeah, I guess his eyes done a very good job in terms of Iran, got the situation to a point where they can almost wipe out Iran's nuclear capability. And so maybe he should take that point. On the other hand, he worries that it could just lead to a worse situation, retaliation by Iran against shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 per cent of global oil supplies flow on a daily basis, and that it might bog the US down in a longer-term conflict. So the fact that he's thinking about it, I think, is a good sign. By the same token, it may just be giving more time for Iran to come to the party and surrender unconditionally. So it could be about that. Or alternatively, it could just be giving more time for the Israelis and the US to prepare the situation to go into trying to take these strikes. But the fact that it's not happening rashly, I think, is a good thing that he is thinking about it. So that gives me a little bit of comfort. And that's, I think, why share markets have ended the week, at least in the Australian time zone, reasonably in a reasonably calm mode. You haven't seen this sort of freefall that might have occurred if we'd gotten up in the morning and found that the US had struck Iran. David Taylor: But I guess that's a possibility still. Shane Oliver: It's still out there. It's still a possibility. I mean, the best outcome for everyone is Iran comes to the table and says, yeah, we're going to negotiate. We'll give you clear access to inspect nuclear facilities to make sure that we're not building nuclear weapons. That's probably the best outcome for everyone. The situation in the Middle East settles down. Oil prices fall back to where they were a few weeks back. And we move on to the next thing, back to focusing on tariffs. But it looks like we could be in for a period of uncertainty regarding this, not only whether the US will act, but when they do, how Iran then responds. And this could take some time before it's finally resolved. And then if Iran does respond and disrupt shipping, they don't have to block the whole of the Strait of Hormuz. They just have to provide enough of a threat to stop shipping going through there. Then how long it takes for the Americans to clear the situation again and remove the threat. And all of that could take quite a while. Samantha Donovan: That's AMP's Head of Investment Strategy, Shane Oliver. He was speaking with our business correspondent, David Taylor.

Perth Now

an hour ago

• Perth Now

Wall St edges up,Trump's Mideast decision in focus

Wall Street's main indexes have nudged higher, tracking strength in global stocks after President Donald Trump held off from making an immediate decision on US involvement in the Israel-Iran war. Trump will take a call in the next two weeks, the White House said on Thursday, as hostilities between the two Middle Eastern countries approached their second week. Markets have been on edge as Trump has kept the world guessing on his plans - veering from proposing a swift diplomatic solution to suggesting the US might join the fight as Israel aims to suppress Tehran's ability to build nuclear weapons. A senior Iranian official told Reuters Tehran was ready to discuss limitations on its uranium enrichment, but zero enrichment will be rejected "especially now under Israel's strikes". Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi has arrived in Geneva to meet European counterparts, who are hoping to establish a path back to diplomacy. "Any news flow that's going to lean in the direction of de-escalation is going to be a market positive and we're seeing that to a certain extent here," said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at B. Riley Wealth. Concerns about price pressures in the US were also in focus after Federal Reserve policymakers on Wednesday warned inflation could pick up pace over the summer as the economic effects of Trump's steep import tariffs kick in. They kept interest rates unchanged. On Friday, Fed governor Chris Waller said the central bank should consider cutting interest rates at its next meeting given recent tame inflation data and because any price shock from tariffs will be short-lived. In early trading on Friday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 123.38 points, or 0.29 per cent, to 42,295.04, the S&P 500 gained 13.34 points, or 0.22 per cent, to 5,994.21 and the Nasdaq Composite gained 38.74 points, or 0.20 per cent, to 19,585.01. Nine of the 11 major S&P 500 sub-sectors rose. Real estate led sector gains with a 0.7 per cent rise. On the flip side, healthcare stocks lost 0.5 per cent. All three main indexes are set for weekly gains. Investors are also bracing for any potential spike in volatility from Friday's "triple witching" - the simultaneous expiration of single stock options, stock index futures, and stock index options contracts that happens once a quarter. Among megacap stocks, Apple advanced 1.3 per cent. Kroger rose 6.4 per cent after the grocery chain increased its annual identical sales forecast. Mondelez International gained 2.4 per cent after brokerage Wells Fargo upgraded the Cadbury parent to "overweight" from "equal-weight". Accenture fell 7.2 per cent after the IT services provider said new bookings decreased in the third quarter. Wall Street's strong gains last month, primarily driven by a softening in Trump's trade stance and strength in corporate earnings, had pushed the benchmark S&P 500 index close to its record peaks before the ongoing conflict in the Middle East made investors risk-averse. The S&P 500 index now remains 2.4 per cent below its record level, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq is 2.8 per cent lower. Advancing issues outnumbered decliners by a 2.16-to-1 ratio on the NYSE and by a 1.45-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq. The S&P 500 posted 12 new 52-week highs and 2 new lows while the Nasdaq Composite recorded 55 new highs and 31 new lows.

The Age

5 hours ago

• The Age

Few believe Iran has nuclear weapons. We can't afford to repeat the Iraq War lie

The Middle East is once again in danger of exploding, with massive global geopolitical and economic implications. The leader who bears most responsibility for this is undoubtedly Benjamin Netanyahu. For years, the Israeli prime minister has doggedly pursued the demise of the Iranian Islamic regime in line with his power interests and his vision of Israel's security requirements. His stated goal has long been to bring down the 'Islamic empire in Iran', 'expand the Abraham Accords with Arabs' and once and for all end the Palestinians' aspirations for an independent state. As part of this Middle East master plan, he has also zeroed in on Iran's nuclear program. But let's not forget: No concrete evidence exists that Iran has been manufacturing nuclear weapons. In a congressional hearing earlier this year, the United States' Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard confirmed this fact. And earlier this week, Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said that 'on the basis of our evaluation, we came to the conclusion that we could not affirm that there is any systematic effort in Iran to manufacture a nuclear weapon'. Despite this, Netanyahu continues to insist that Iran is on course to produce nuclear weapons within weeks, and the US is teetering on entering the war in Israel's support. Meanwhile, he omits the fact that Israel itself has its own nuclear program. Though Israel has never formally confirmed or denied its nuclear arsenal, its national Atomic Energy Commission was established in 1952. By 1958, researchers believe the government had established a weapons development site in Dimona, and American intelligence from the 1960s stated that there was a reprocessing plant for plutonium production at the site. Loading As the Federation of American Scientists wrote in 2007, 'the existence of Israeli nuclear weapons is a 'public secret' by now due to the declassification of large numbers of formerly highly classified US government documents which show that the United States by 1975 was convinced that Israel had nuclear weapons'. According to the Centre for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, Israel today has at least 90 nuclear warheads and enough material to produce hundreds more. The United Nations' nuclear watchdog has also found that of the 30 countries capable of developing nuclear weapons, Israel is among nine that possess them (Russia, US, China, France, United Kingdom, Pakistan, India, Israel and North Korea).