Australian personnel aboard a US nuclear submarine during an attack on an Iranian vessel highlight the deeper implications of AUKUS – and the risk of Australia being drawn into American wars.

The AUKUS trilateral pact has cost Australia dear. Over the decades, it will cost the Australian taxpayers well over the projected A$368 billion being assessed by the wonks in Canberra. Nuclear-powered submarines of the Virginia Class may or may not be delivered.

An Australian-UK designed equivalent may or may not be built. Both these features of the agreement are academic, given that Australian maritime facilities will be the colonial outposts for both US and UK nuclear submarines to operate in their flailing attempt to maintain power in the Indo-Pacific.

But what of the lives engaged and lost in the whole nasty business? Getting submarines under the supposed Pillar One of the agreement is becoming an increasingly irrelevant feature of the pact: Australian sailors will be under the direction and supervision of the US Navy in any case. This means that any conflict the US engages in will automatically commit Australian defence personnel to it, whatever the wishes of parliamentarians in Canberra.

This abominable policy has been clearly shown by the revelation – after much initial reluctance – by the Australian government that Australian sailors were present on a US nuclear-powered submarine, most likely the Virginia-class USS Minnesota, when it attacked the Iranian frigate IRIS Dena off the coast of Sri Lanka. The grotesque scene, which featured a devastating strike on the vessel with a Mark-48 torpedo killing 87 Iranian seamen, was shown with relish by Pentagon officials, drawing enthusiastic remarks from the US Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth.

The Albanese government would have stayed mum on the issue but for the reporting by Nine News on 5 March that two Australian maritime personnel were in the attack submarine. An Australian Defence spokesperson told the outlet that, “There are long-standing arrangements to third country deployments to ensure Australian interests are managed appropriately.” This degree of appropriation, questionable in the extreme, also involved not going “into these details.” There were “operational security reasons” why the ADF did “not disclose specific details regarding third party deployments, including the number of personnel or their location.” Going on to show a distinct lack of candour, the spokesperson went on to distance Australia from the operation. “As the United States and Israel have said, the military strikes were initiated and conducted by the United States and Israel – not Australia.”

When the matter was brought up in Parliament by Greens Senator David Shoebridge, Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong was limp with interest. “The US operations,” she responded tersely, “are a matter for the United States.” Shoebridge had been impertinent in asking “about Australian Defence Force personnel … for operational and security reasons, we do not disclose specific information regarding Australian personnel.” With slavish indifference to corroborating the circumstances behind the strike, Wong took it at face value (dare one ever do otherwise with the Trump administration?) that the sinking of the Iranian frigate was justified because it was “preparing to strike”. US government statements on this, however, remain nigh non-existent.

The foreign minister’s response was as good as a confession, given that ADF personnel have been doing the rounds on US attack-submarines and undergoing training sessions in the US. In October last year, the Defence Department revealed that over 50 were serving on attack submarines operating out of Pearl Harbor, with 100 more training in the country.

Evidently realising that this was not a situation he could not contain, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese decided to come clean on Sky News. Three Australians were on board the boat when the attack took place. “We wouldn’t normally confirm such an issue but given our [National Security Committee] meetings and the public interest, I can confirm that there were three Australian personnel on board that vessel.” Rather weakly, he went on to “confirm also, that no Australian personnel have participated in any offensive action against Iran.”

Albanese seems to have been in Donald Trump’s overgrown jungle of relative truths for too long. While not all members of a submarine crew push the lethal trigger, they are all one, unified unit when conducting operations. There can be, by definition, no uninvolved personnel when an attack is initiated. Despite this, the PM could still mouth the following nonsense: “These are long-standing third-country arrangements that have been in place for long periods of time, and what they do is ensure that Australian Defence personnel, where there are embedded in third countries’ defence assets, they act in accordance with Australian law, Australian policy, and that is, of course, taking place across the board.”

Shoebridge was more direct about the implications of these deployments. “Labor’s statement since this war began that Australia is not directly involved … is a lie.” Australia was “being dragged into these wars because of the dystopian logic of AUKUS, that we’re somehow safer by being part of an alliance led by Donald Trump and his lawless regime.”

When Wong stated that US naval operations were an issue for Washington, it was more telling than she intended. Even where Australian personnel find themselves in the company of an American killing machine in war, neither their lives, nor their complicity, seems to matter. That hardly counts as appropriate management.