Two RAAF aircraft have been sent to the Middle East to prepare to evacuate stranded Australians.
As reported in he Australian Financial ReviewA “government source” said a C-17A Globemaster and a KC-30A Multi-Role Tanker Transport have been deployed to the region as part of Operation Beech. It comes as limited commercial flights from the Gulf have restarted.
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“Our government’s first priority is and always will be to protect Australians and keep them safe at home and abroad. We have 115,000 Australians in the Middle East, 24,000 of them in the United Arab Emirates,” Foreign Minister Penny Wong said in question time on Thursday.
“As we have said, we have been working on contingencies to keep Australians safe and bring travelers home. We have deployed DFAT personnel to the region as part of the crisis response teams. They are on the ground providing medical and consular support.
“We have already deployed military assets as part of our contingency plan earlier this week. We will continue to look at all options available to us, engaging partners and taking action to support efforts to keep Australians safe.”
The Minister noted that hundreds of Australians have already left the Gulf region, which has seen significant airspace closures due to the US-Israel conflict with Iran.
“We understand that the UAE and airlines are working hard to put flights out of the region. Of course, they also need to ensure that flights can leave safely,” he said.
“Obviously the situation is enormously difficult while the region is under attack by the Iranian regime, however commercial flights remain the fastest way to help Australians leave the Middle East on a large scale.
“There are many thousands more Australians waiting for flights home. This will continue to be a difficult time for many Australians, and travel disruptions could persist for some time.”
Operation Beech was also the name given to evacuation efforts in 2025, which saw the RAAF conduct repatriation flights from Iran and Israel during last year’s brief conflict, in which some 4,200 Australians were stranded. The RAAF and commercial airlines previously evacuated Australians from Israel in late 2023 and from Lebanon in 2024.
The exact locations of the two Operation Beech planes have not been revealed for security reasons.
