I'm Ruby Jones and you're listening to seven AM. Australia acted against Iran after ASIO found Tehran orchestrated two anti Semitic arson attacks on Australian soil, expelling Iran's ambassador and moving to lists the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization. For Carlie Moore Gilbert, it's a long time coming.
She spent eight hundred and four days in prison under IRGC control after being arrested in Tehran on charges of espionage. Today she explains who the IIGC are, why they would attack Australia, and what this listing would actually change. It's Thursday, September four So, Kylie, you spent more than two years in prison in Iran. Could you tell me a bit about your dealings with the iig during that time.
So, I unfortunately know the intelligence organization of the IIGC very well because I lived with them, lived alongside them for more than two years of my life. I was arrested by IGC at the Tehran airport in September twenty eighteen.
The Department of Foreign Affairs has confirmed it is providing consular assistance to the families of three Australians who have been detained in Iran. A British Australian academic is believed to have been detained for several months now.
And they imprisoned me in a facility that was run exclusively by them, with prison guards that were members of their organization.
Doctor more Gilbert has spent almost a year in solitary confinement in Tehran's notorious Even Prison. It's understood she was arrested after traveling to Iran to attend a course about two hours from Tehran.
Nearly the entire two years and three months that I spent in prison in Iran was under their direct control. So I had many, many conversations with them, with all kinds of different factions and individuals within that organization, and got a pretty good handle on their frankly quite bonkers and crazy at times worldview. And you know they are at terror organization. There's no doubt about that. They have
been for decades. I think it's been a really really long time coming to recognize this in Australia, but I think it's really warranted and I hope it will enable the government to crack down a little bit on some of their activities.
Here, and so during your time in prison, what kinds of things did the IGC guards ask you about.
Well, they interrogated me. So I was thrown in prison, thrown into solitary confinement, and much later down the track, let's say, six months later, accused of espionage. But after I had been given a ten year prison sentence, I spent quite a bit of time just waiting for something
to happen. I guess, you know, like hanging out, for want of a better term, in this interrogation facility, talking to my captors, talking to my interrogators, but also the regular prison guards, the administrators of the prison, the people who run the system, judiciary officials, all kinds of people
within the IOGC apparatus. And you know, we would talk politics, we would talk history, They would want my views on certain world events and the conspiracy theory mindset that the IGC have is just incomprehensible to most of us living here in Australia. But my impression overall was that they weren't particularly negative toward Australia. They obviously don't have positive relations with the United States and Israel and to a
certain extent, the UK. They also really hated Saudi Arabia at the time I was there, and so they would often rant and rave about them as well. But they saw us as a bit of a lackey of the US. But they didn't have particularly negative ideas about Australia.
And just to take a little step back, could you tell me a bit more just about the io DC and the power that they have in Iran, the way they operate.
So the IGC are essentially a state within a state within Iran right now. They started off as an armed militant group, particularly following the seventy nine revolution.
The end of Iran's monarchy came early today when Harmonia's followers took control of the Palace of the Shah.
They basically are charged with ensuring the success of the revolution, protecting the Supreme Leader, protecting all the revolutionary institutions that were set up in the wake of the fall of the Shah that the previous ruler of Iran.
Relations between Iran and Iraq worsened when the Iotolas took over. The Iraqis claimed that the Iranians were refusing to implement border agreements, and the first skirmishes broke out.
Then you know you had eight years of war with Saddam Hussein's Iraq shortly afterwards, and they were a prominent military force in that war.
Deep in Iranian territory. Iraqi Arma chalks out fresh successes on the battlefield. For once, an Arab army is inflicting territorial laws on the enemy. The enmity here between Arab and Persian as old as that between Arab and Jews.
So they got all kinds of weapons and real world battle experience from that. And so when the war came to an end in nineteen eighty nine, they were kind of an unstoppable force. You couldn't put the genie back in the bottle. At that point you had this rival armed organization to the Uranian military that answered only to the Supreme Leader and still does. I mean, the Uranian government has no control over the IGC. They do what they want, They have their own policies, they have their
own interests. They run parallel systems to the government. So they have their own court system, their own prison system. There are an intelligence organization, for example, and get away with terrorism and all kinds.
Of other nefarious behaviors as a result. And so after you were released and you returned to Australia. Did you have conversations with the Australian government about the IIGC.
Absolutely.
I was obviously wrongfully detained by them, and so when I came back from my time in Iran, I was vocal about calling out this behavior, and particularly following the twenty twenty two Masamini Woman Life Freedom Uprising in Iran, which saw you know, hundreds of thousands of Iranians take to the streets to call for freedoms and women's rights, gender equality and ultimately the removal of the regime altogether. And the IOGC was very instrumental in putting down violently these protests.
Iran's government has cracked down in the streets with force because the numbers have wounded, arrested, and even dad mount.
You know, they killed more than five hundred people, shooting them in the streets, including children, imprisoned more than twenty thousand, committing horrific atrocities basically, and the Australian government was watching this and was being lobbied quite actively by the Iranian Australian community, particularly over theo GC and its reach into Australia and its ability to surveil and threaten and harass
Iranian Australian community members, for example. And there was a Senate inquiry into Irounds human rights abuses in twenty two twenty twenty three, and I contributed to that inquiry, and ultimately the inquiry's adopted recommendation was to prescribe the IOGC as a terror organization and to limit the ability of people within Australia to support it and to work on its behalf.
Can you tell me a bit more about that, about the impact of the IGC on Iranians in Australia or Rani in Australians.
So you know, they've been present on the ground here for a while. They openly admitted as such to me when I was in prison in Iran. They said, you know, they would threaten me and say that they could target me back here on Australian soil if I came home and didn't do what they said or what they wanted. They have operatives and sympathizers and informers here in Australia. It's a deliberate strategy for them to place such people here.
It's not coincidental, and they monitor the Iranian community here. They want to know what dissidents and protesters and community organizations that are against the regime a doing. They keep
files and information on these people. They try and blackmail them, particularly using family members back in Iran to get them to stay silent, not to cease their activities, and they've become more aggressive in their tactics, so really harassing people, not just monitoring, but threatening to kidnap people from Australia and take them back to Iran, threatening to jail and imprisoned family members, following people in the streets, even getting
into physical altercations with them, photographing them against their will, using every kind of tactic they can to put pressure on people living here in Australia who do have the right to freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, but letting them know that they're being watched and followed and that there are ramifications back home in Iran or even here on Australian soil for their political activity.
Coming up, What impact will listing the IRGC as a terror organization actually have? Kylie the Australian government and AZO. They say that the intent behind the antisemitic attacks here in Australia was to sow social discord. So tell me what you make of that motivation. Why would that be the goal of the IRGC.
I think the IGC, you know, they so discord wherever they go. I mean, I don't think it's their primary goal necessarily, but they care I think more about intimidating certain community groups in Australia rather than necessarily every Australian equally. Since October seventh, as part of this shadow war with Israel, I think they just added the Jewish community to that
list of targets. You know, anti Semitism is very deeply baked in to the igc's ideology, and it's much much easier for them to come to Australia, to a place like Melbourne where people are living in relative freedom and safety, and pay criminal elements to have these attacks than it is for them to go to Tel Aviv or Jerusalem and do the same thing over there. And I just think it's opportunism and it works, and it's relatively cheap for them to do as well.
So why not, Okay, tell me a bit more about what we know about the iigc's activities in other countries.
Sure, it's a really important point actually that this is not confined to Australia. You know, Australia is not the number one target of the IOGC, but they've been doing here, particularly the sponsorship of anti synitic attacks, but using organized crime criminal syndicates to conduct attacks. It's a pattern that we've seen years earlier in parts of Europe and North America.
We have seen, in particular in the UK, targeted campaigns by criminal gangs to physically assault journalists, particularly journalists of Iran International, which is a dissident or an independent media
channel that has deep penetration in Iran. It's the number one watch satellite channel inside Iran and it's anti regime and they had their headquarters in the UK and one of their journalists was stabbed multiple times in the street by criminal elements that had been paid by the IRGC to attack him.
The Iranian journalist was attacked outside his home in London at the end of last month. It's a stark reminder of the danger facing many Iranians who choose to criticize the regime in Tehran.
Very prominent, outspoken distance who've been given a refugee vis or abroad or they've migrated, and they've become extremely vocal since then, have been threatened and attacked by IRGC and criminal elements working for them, and there are cases of them, particularly in places like Germany, actually killing people that are critics of the Iranian regime. So this has a long history and it's far more developed in other parts of the world.
In Australia, and what do you think the impact will be of listing the IOGC as a terrorist organization, both for Iranians in Australia and anyone in Iran with connections to Australia.
I don't think it's going to have a huge impact on most Iranians in Australia because most Iranians in Australia do not support the IOGC or the regime in Iran, and they're happy about this. I mean, I mean, I've seen multiple numerous statements by Iranian Australian organizations, politically engaged or not. You know, some of them are just cultural organizations, but they're in support of this in full. You know, they want the IOGC to be listed, they want the
ambassador to be kicked out. What it might impact in a positive way, however, is the ability for the IOGC to send people who've been blackmailed or exploited or convinced coerced into acting on behalf of the IOGC. Here in Australia, it's much harder to do that if this is a listed terror organization, and the repercussions for that are greater. I think there's only ever been one person charged under foreign interference laws in Australia and that case is ongoing
right now. It's a new area. There hasn't been great appetite to go after these people in the past who are doing foreign interference and you know, harassment of ethnic communities, etc.
But if it's a terror.
Organization, I mean, that's a whole nother ballgame. And if you're providing material support to a listed terror organization, that's a highly serious charge.
And critics of the Iranian regime have been calling for the IRGC to be listed as a terrorist organization for a long time, but for years the government opted to try and I guess keep lines of diplomacy open. But given that they have now cut ties and kicked out the ambassador, what does that say to you about the limits of diplomacy when you're dealing with a regime like this.
This is a regime that doesn't respect diplomacy and probably doesn't even understand diplomacy, you know, the premise of open discussion and cooperation and respect for mutually agreed laws and norms that diplomacy is predicated upon. This is not respected by the IOGC and probably by the Iranian regime or broadly either. They've shown themselves on multiple occasions to not give a damn soever about fundamentals of international law that
they themselves have signed up to. The particular concern I have is that we do have at least one Australian citizen in prison in Iran right now who's been there for three years plus, and the lack of an embassy, the lack of consular assistance there now for this individual, and also the lack of that channel of communication around negotiating his release, It really concerns me. Is this going
to set back any efforts that were underway? So we do need some communication with the Ranians over such issues. I do hope that it won't implode entirely, and we are keeping three junior officials in the embassy. In camera kicked all Iranian diplomats out of Australia, so hopefully that's a sign that it might be more of a low level relationship, but that some channel of communication will remain open for these important mutual interests.
Kylie, thank you so much. Fatian, thanks so much for having me. Also in the news today, China's president Shi Jinping has hosted the country's largest ever military parade, flanked by North Koreas Kim Jong Un and Russia's Vladimir Putin. In a post on truth social US President Donald Trump asked China's leader to give mister Putin and mister Kim his rule most regards as they conspire against the United
States of America. Former Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews was among those who attended, and the federal government will immediately fund twenty thousand more home care packages to support older Australians living at home. Cave in too pressure from across the parliament. The Coalition Greens and Independence teamed up to demand the government fund more packages after new packages were delayed alongside
broader reforms. From July to November. The government had promised eighty three thousand new packages as part of its broader reforms, but following the delay, none were released, adding pressure to a wait list that had grown from eighty seven thousand in March to one hundred and eight thousand in July. I'm Ruby Jones. Thanks for listening.