The problem with Boeing

Australian Government provides military support for US ”act of war” against Iran

The United States has insisted that the UAE impose sanctions on Iran. The Australian government announced E-7A Wedgetail deployment to the Gulf on Tuesday, 10 March 2026. This decision assists UAE with forewarning of missile attacks against the UAE (E-7A is detecting incoming Iranian missiles and drones). The E-7A Wedgetail departed Australia for the Australian Government’s March 2026 Gulf deployment was A30-004. Australian Defence said in June 2026 that the Gulf aircraft had already flown more than 40 missions since arriving in March ’26, and referred to the first operational rotation handing over to a second rotation.

UAE trade with Iran

The UAE has a two-way goods-trade of about US$28 billion a year If the UAE follows the U.S. sanctions directive, Iran will attack the UAE, and it is clear that Iran has the capacity to wreck the UAE as a functioning state, given their missile and drone superiority in the Gulf and the depleted missile defence systems provided to the UAE by the US. That puts the UAE between a rock and a hard place along with its supporters (including Australia).

Australia’s defensive airforce deployment has become critical to the imposition of UAE sancstions against Iran. How will the UAE fare when the missile begin flying?

UAE trade with Iran

The United States is insisting that UAE impose sanctions because:

1) The UAE is one of the signatories to the Abraham Accords with Israel, along with Saudi Arabia.
2) The UAE crucial economic relations with Iran (far more than the other Gulf states). So sanctions against Iran, from a United States point of view, must be imposed by the UAE.
3) UAE capital Dubai is a commercial gateway to Iran with trade goods flowing each way.
4) The UAE port of Fujairah is strategically important because it sits on the UAE’s eastern coast, outside the Strait of Hormuz, and is connected to Abu Dhabi by the Habshan–Fujairah crude pipeline. That makes it a major alternative route for exporting UAE oil without having to send it through Hormuz.

Fujairah is precisely the sort of strategic infrastructure whose protection would make airborne early-warning and air-defence capabilities valuable to the UAE.

Australia has put itself so far into the US administration’s camp it is hard to see how it can credibly deny active involvement in an illegal war of aggression against Iran. No big revelation there. But what of the likely casualties should Iran attack the UAE?

Australia’s foreign minister, Minister for Defence , and Prime Minister have all claimed that the Boeing program of sending a Wedgetail Boeing to warn UAE of imminent attack will not be an aggressive act. They said “It will be a defensive act just to tell the UAE about incoming missiles“.

This is not the current situation if it ever was, because Australian intelligence is being used to assist the United States and Israel to conduct an illegal war of aggression against Iran.

A seemingly innocuous program sending Australian Air Force assets into the Gulf may become an act of war. There are 1,500 Boeing employees at 123 Albert Street in Brisbane CBD, housed in that building, and a big section of the job that they perform is to make sure that that E-7A Wedgetail program works.

Consequences

So the Boeing building in Brisbane is providing backup to this so-called defensive program, when in fact it brings them directly into a threat against Iran, a middle power, a ‘war of choice’, a war where that middle power is fighting for its survival.

The U.S. poses an existential threat to Iran.

If the UAE does impose the sanctions demanded of it by the U.S., then they will find themselves at the business end of Iranians’ wrath, which is fully capable of wiping out U.S. bases in UAE, its desalination plants and therefore its migrant workers, valuable infrastructure, and a possible attack on Dubai itself.

The UAE is active in world aviation, the Emirates is one of the biggest commercial airlines in the world, including providing long haul flights from Australia. The fallout of Australian government decisions in this war is coming. It may not come straight away, but it is coming soon, and it is an incentive for the Australian government to reverse its decisions of going along with the United States, something it keeps failing to do. So that leaves people in Australia at risk because of our government’s poor decisions.

Complicity arguments

1. The Wednesday Boeing picket

Every Wednesday from 12 noon to 2 pm, activists gather outside Boeing’s building at 123 Albert Street in Brisbane CBD for a lunchtime picket. Their argument is that Boeing is one of Australia’s largest arms manufacturers and is involved in military programs connected to the wars and conflicts in Palestine, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

The current E-7A Wedgetail deployment to the Gulf gives the protest an additional Australian dimension. Boeing has a role in supporting the Wedgetail capability, while the RAAF aircraft is being used in the Gulf’s air-defence arrangements.

2. The responsibility of the building owner

The second argument concerns the owner of 123 Albert Street, which provides Boeing with its Brisbane premises.

Ian Curr
30 Aug 2026