From Perth, the picture looks rather different from what Canberra's crisis briefings might suggest. Families at Perth Airport waited up to twelve hours on Sunday for relatives connecting through Gulf hubs that no longer exist in any functional sense. Qantas flight QF9, the direct Perth-to-London service, was rerouted over Southeast Asia and Central Asia, adding nearly four hours to the journey and requiring a refuelling stop in Singapore. The Middle East, for West Australians, is not a distant abstraction. It sits squarely in the flight path between Perth and everywhere else.
The trigger for the chaos was a joint US-Israeli military operation, launched on Saturday, that struck targets across Iran including in Tehran. The United States and Israel launched joint strikes on Iran over the weekend, killing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, prompting waves of retaliatory attacks by Tehran across the region. The National Security Committee of Cabinet met on Sunday morning as the scale of the crisis became apparent.
The Albanese government backed the American strike on Iran, while confirming Australia was not given prior warning. In a joint statement with Defence Minister Richard Marles and Foreign Minister Penny Wong, Albanese said after Khamenei's death was confirmed that "his passing will not be mourned", and the three ministers stated that "it has long been recognised that Iran's nuclear program is a threat to global peace and security" and that "we support the United States acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon."
The government's position rested on a foundation built well before Saturday's strikes. Iran directed at least two attacks on Australian soil in 2024, targeting Australia's Jewish community in acts described as intended to create fear and challenge sovereignty. In response, Australia expelled Iran's Ambassador, suspended operations at the embassy in Tehran, and listed the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a state sponsor of terrorism. The government also sanctioned more than 200 Iranian-linked individuals. That context gave the Prime Minister's endorsement of the strikes a domestic policy logic that was hard to dismiss.
The immediate consular challenge, however, is severe. Foreign Minister Penny Wong indicated that airspace closures caused by Iranian retaliatory strikes are likely to limit the federal government's ability to organise repatriation flights for Australians stranded in the Middle East. "The government's very aware this is extremely distressing and concerning for the region, and particularly Australians in the region," she told reporters in Adelaide on Sunday. The Australian Embassy's operations in Tehran are suspended and the government's ability to provide consular assistance in Iran is extremely limited.
Australia issued "Do Not Travel" warnings for Israel, Lebanon, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates as tensions escalated, and is urgently trying to verify if any citizens have been caught up in the conflict. A diplomatic crisis centre has been established. Australian citizens, permanent residents and their immediate family members in Israel and Iran can register on DFAT's registration portal to receive direct updates. The consular emergency line, 1300 555 135 within Australia, has been operating around the clock.
DFAT estimates that upwards of 15,000 Australians are currently in the affected region, many of them dual citizens or expats working in the aviation and energy sectors of the Gulf. The aviation disruption is staggering in scale. More than 2,300 flights were cancelled across the region on Saturday alone, with a further 716 scrapped on Sunday, and global delays topped 18,000. Four Qatar Airways flights operating for Virgin Australia, departing Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth for Doha, were forced to turn back mid-flight when Qatar's airspace was shut down, with a total of seven flights on the route cancelled.
Iranian missiles were fired at Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Doha, all key east-west aviation gateways. Officials at Dubai International Airport said four people were injured, while Zayed International Airport in Abu Dhabi reported one person killed and seven others injured in a drone strike. Emirates suspended all flights to and from Dubai until at least Monday afternoon. For the tens of thousands of Australians who rely on Dubai, Doha and Abu Dhabi as transit points for European travel, the closure of those hubs amounts to a complete severing of normal connectivity.
The political fault lines at home opened quickly. Shadow foreign minister Ted O'Brien said: "Our position is clear: Israel has the right to defend itself and Iranians have the right to live free of oppression." The bipartisan consensus at that level, though, had a notable dissenter from within the Coalition itself. Nationals senator Matt Canavan offered a sceptical note, telling The Conversation that "not a single regime change war has left the world a better place in my lifetime." That is not a fringe view; it is a serious historical reading shared by foreign policy realists across the spectrum.
The Greens were far sharper in their opposition. Greens leader Larissa Waters said the Albanese government had "backed Trump and another US-led war in the Middle East" and that Labor had "outsourced Australian foreign policy to Washington." She also argued that Australia had made itself a party to the war by allowing Pine Gap and other US military facilities to be used to gather intelligence. That last point raises legitimate questions about Australia's legal exposure and the terms of its alliance commitments, regardless of one's view on the merits of the strikes themselves.
There are genuine tensions here that no government talking point can resolve cleanly. Australia's backing of the strikes was grounded in a coherent account of Iranian conduct, including attacks on Australian soil and a decades-long nuclear programme. The government's record of sanctions and diplomatic pressure on Tehran gave that position real credibility. At the same time, the civilian cost of the strikes is not a minor footnote. The largest civilian death toll so far reportedly came from a strike on a girls' school in the southern Iranian city of Minab, where at least 85 students died according to state news agency IRNA. Those deaths sit uncomfortably alongside any framing of the operation as purely targeted and proportionate.
The Australian government has said it does not want to see this escalate into a wider regional conflict, continues to urge the protection of civilian life, and seeks the resumption of dialogue and diplomacy, calling on all parties to adhere to international humanitarian law. That is a reasonable position, and one that should be held to. The political calculus shifts significantly when you factor in what happens if Iranian reprisals spread further, energy prices spike through Strait of Hormuz disruptions, or the conflict draws in other regional actors. For a resource-exporting nation that depends on stable sea lanes and open Gulf airspace, Australia has more skin in this game than the eastern-seaboard commentary has so far acknowledged. The government was right to act on the threat Iran has posed. Whether it has thought carefully enough about what comes next is a question that deserves a frank answer.