Exclusive: Behind the scenes of evacuating Australians from the Middle East

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As Iran and Israel ramp up aerial attacks on each other, private companies have been evacuating hundreds of people, including Australians, out of the two countries while airspaces remain closed.

About 1,200 Australians have registered with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade for help to leave Israel and a further 1,500 Australians and family members want to leave Iran.

The department’s official advice is for Australians to shelter in place if in Iran and to not travel to Israel or Iran, as the two nations threaten further deadly missile strikes, following Israel’s attack aimed at destroying Iran’s nuclear facilities last week and subsequent exchanges of fire.

The federal government has also said it is looking at how it can assist Australians who are stranded in Israel and Iran.

People looking at a building that has been destroyed.

Israelis look at the site of an Iranian ballistic missile strike in Bnei Brak on 16 June 2025, in which one elderly man was killed and dozens were injured. Source: Getty, NurPhoto / Gili Yaari

Iran’s airspace, and Israel’s main airport, Ben Gurion International, are both closed “until further notice”, while neighbouring Jordan and Iraq have both closed their airspaces multiple times since Friday.

James Robertson is the global head of security at International SOS, a private company that provides medical and security assistance to people studying or working internationally.

He told SBS News the company has received many requests in the past week to assist with evacuating Australians from Iran and Israel, as well as some in neighbouring countries who fear for their safety.

In other instances, the company would fly people in and out of risk zones, however this is not currently possible.

Robertson said they’ve been able to drive “hundreds of people”, including Australians, across land borders and conduct a smaller number of maritime evacuations from Middle Eastern ports in the last week.

“We’ve moved hundreds of people in the last five odd days, and that’s composed of smaller movements of groups of one or two, and a number of larger groups of people including some bus movements and some convoys over land.

“The challenge is getting people to somewhere safe in the first instance where they might be able to wait with food, medical attention if they need it, communications, and then, if it’s safe to move them onwards, to a port of departure. So that’s been our main focus,” he said.

Iraeli emergency personnel in Tel Aviv at site of an Iranian strike

The Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) building was struck by an Israeli attack. Source: Getty / Alexi J Rosenfeld

Robertson said they’ve moved people via ports in Beirut and Haifa to Cyprus, and through the Sheikh Hussein crossing between northern Israel into Jordan and a crossing between the occupied West Bank and Jordan.

Robertson said the situation is more difficult in Iran and also fewer requests have come from Australians because fewer travel there for work due to strict economic sanctions, while a nationwide internet outage disrupted the situation further.

“We’ve been advising people to evacuate their staff from Iran or prepare to evacuate when safe to do so, but that’s not easy at the moment,” he said.

“We’ve been seeing people either hunkering down, standing fast, in Iran or trying to leave through the land borders to places like Türkiye.”

Robertson said the operations are immensely tricky to organise.

“People from the one group might be spread out all over Israel, for example.

“The first step is to aggregate them in some kind of assembly area. So we designate secure hotels and other key transport hubs then.

“And then the second phase is to move them to a port of departure.”

From Israel, it takes many hours to drive across into Jordan, Robertson said.

“The border crossings and checkpoints are really busy, so there’s long wait times in processing and transit.

“People should be planning for significant disruption and be prepared to remain in place somewhere safe, whether it’s an office, a home, a hotel, even an airport for a really long period of time waiting for airspace to change or for border crossing (to) open,” he said.

Why it’s hard for Australians to leave the Middle East

Treasurer Jim Chalmers said the Australian government was examining options for those who want to return, but evacuations were proving difficult due to airspace being closed.

“We’re obviously working very closely with those Australians via the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT),” he told ABC Radio on Wednesday.

“We’re monitoring developments in that very dangerous part of the world very closely.”

Foreign minister Penny Wong said Monday that DFAT’s crisis centres were “working on a range of plans, including a plan for assistive departures when airspace is open and when it is safe to do so”.

A DFAT spokesperson echoed those remarks in a statement to SBS News.

“DFAT’s consular team is working to assist Australians to safety, via land and air when it is safe to do so,” the spokesperson said

International human rights law specialist at the University of New South Wales Regina Jefferies told SBS News that governments may look to assist people to get to third countries to depart risk zones but “there is a limit to what governments can do”.

“The government has a duty of care and has to be assured there is a safe way to evacuate people.

“There is so much contingency planning because, for example, it may not be obvious where road routes are because it’s not predictable necessarily where Iran or Israel is going to strike and that’s a risk.”

Jefferies said a lot of the transport infrastructure, including roads and airports in Israel and Iran, is “essentially unusable.”

“I think a lot of times people assume that when disaster hits, whether it’s armed conflict, or natural disasters that a lot of the transport infrastructure is still going to be in the same situation that they were prior to the event happening,” she said.

“And that’s just not the case generally.”