‘Three or four’ countries involved in foreign interference in Australia including ‘friends’, Mike Burgess says

Mike Burgess has urged politicians and the media to be careful with their language after the decision to raise Australia’s terrorism threat level from ‘possible’ to ‘probable’. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP

Australia’s spy boss, Mike Burgess, has confirmed that Iran is one of “at least three or four” countries involved in foreign interference in Australia’s diaspora communities.

Speaking on ABC’s Insiders on Sunday, the director general of security in charge of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation said he could think of “at least three or four [countries] that are we’ve actually actively found involved in foreign interference in Australia and diaspora communities”.