About 3,000 Australians in Iran have registered for assistance to leave. But just days after Israel started bombing Tehran, Australia’s diplomatic staff were evacuated.<\/p>\n
Soon after Israel began bombing Iran in mid-June, DFAT evacuated its staff<\/a> from Tehran to Azerbaijan.<\/p>\n On the advice of DFAT, some Australians in Iran travelled to the Iran-Azerbaijan border hoping leave Iran last week but got knocked back by Azerbaijan officials in part because they didn’t have a special code, the ABC reported on Thursday.<\/a><\/p>\n Late on Friday, a DFAT spokesperson said the backlog of Australian requests for border crossing codes had been resolved.<\/p>\n They said DFAT was supporting Australians who wished to leave Iran secure seats on commercial flights that had begun operating out of the country.<\/p>\n A US government security alert said Iranian airspace had partially reopened, “although commercial travel from Tehran and other major hubs may be disrupted”.<\/p>\n Iranian-Australians ‘disillusioned’<\/p>\n Melbourne woman Maryam is worried for her mother, brother and his family who live in Iran.<\/p>\n “The possibility of war would take everything away, you know, and you worry about what would happen to them and just how we could support them in in all of this,” said Maryam.<\/p>\n A building damaged in Israeli strikes in Tehran in June 2025.\u00a0 (Reuters: Majid Asgaripour\/West Asia News Agency\u00a0)<\/p>\n Maryam’s mother is not an Australian citizen and while she has previously held visitor visas, she does not have a visa that is currently valid.<\/p>\n DFAT allows people who are citizens or their close relatives to register for emergency assistance via the crisis portal.<\/p>\n Maryam said Australia backing the US strikes against Iran<\/a> did not sit well with many Iranians in Australia.<\/p>\n “I think every Iranian I talk to, they felt very disillusioned,” she said.<\/p>\n “You’re working here. You’re paying tax. We are trying to contribute to this society.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n There are more than 85,000 Iranian-born people living in Australia, according to Home Affairs.<\/p>\n Australian-Iranian Soroush, a civil engineer who works in fly-in fly-out jobs in West Australia, arrived back in Australia last week after leaving Iran via Turkiye.<\/p>\n A map showing Iran with the overland route from Tehran to Astara on the Azerbaijan border. (ABC News: Jarrod Fankhauser)<\/p>\n Soroush was in Iran visiting his parents and sister for the first time in two years, but his trip got cut short by the Israel-Iran war.<\/p>\n Soroush said he drove from Tehran to the border with Turkiye to escape \u2014 and faced chaotic situations trying to get out of Iran.<\/p>\n He had tried to register with DFAT but couldn’t get through the process because of a lack of internet access in Iran.<\/p>\n Iranian authorities have regularly cut off internet access in the country<\/a> since the war with Israel broke out \u2014 on some occasions for days at a time.<\/p>\n Soroush took this photo in Tehran during the recent missile strikes.\u00a0 (Supplied)<\/p>\n “I couldn’t even phone my friends to tell them to do this for me, and then when I decided to exit from Turkiye,” Soroush said.<\/p>\n “I thought, ‘if I get stuck somewhere, I will continue registering’.”\u00a0<\/p>\n Heated exchanges continue<\/p>\n As a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Iran continued to hold, there was further heated rhetoric from the White House in response to comments from Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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