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Two RAAF aircraft have been sent to the Middle East to prepare to evacuate stranded Australians.
As reported in the Australian Financial Review, a “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 have recommenced from the Gulf.
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“The first priority of our government is and always will be to protect Australians and keep them safe at home and overseas. We have 115,000 Australians in the Middle East, 24,000 of them in the UAE,” 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 get travellers home. We’ve sent DFAT personnel to the region as part of crisis response teams. They are on the ground providing medical and consular support.
“We have already deployed military assets as part of our contingency planning earlier this week. We will continue to look at all options that we have 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 extensive airspace closures due to the US-Israel conflict with Iran.
“We understand that the UAE and airlines are working hard to put on flights out of the region. They also need to of course make sure that flights can safely depart,” she said.
“Obviously, the situation is enormously difficult while the region is under attack by the Iranian regime; however, commercial flights continue to be the fastest way to help Australians leave the Middle East at scale.
“There are many more thousands of Australians waiting for flights to come home. This will continue to be a challenging 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, which saw around 4,200 Australians stranded. The RAAF and commercial airlines have previously evacuated Australians from Israel in late 2023 and from Lebanon in 2024.
The exact locations of the two Operation Beech aircraft have not been disclosed for security purposes.
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