Canadian officials are encouraging Israeli violence in Iran. Once again, they are supporting the neoconservatives who view the genocide in Gaza, weakening of Hezbollah and Iran’s response to Israeli provocations as a bid to remake the Middle East just like in the build-up to the last US invasion of Iraq. As former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett crowed, “Israel has now its greatest opportunity in 50 years, to change the face of the Middle East.”
Last week Bill Blair said it would be “appropriate” for Israel to bomb Iranian oil facilities. “When we talk about (Israel’s) ability to defend (itself), certainly that would include missile launch sites, military installations, airfields from which these attacks are being launched,” Canada’s defence minister said. Asked whether that included attacking Iranian oil facilities, Blair said he thought that would be “appropriate.”
Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre incited the apartheid state to go further. He stated, “I think the idea of allowing a genocidal, theocratic, unstable dictatorship that is desperate to avoid being overthrown by its own people to develop nuclear weapons is about the most dangerous and irresponsible thing that the world could ever allow,” Poilievre said. “If Israel were to stop that genocidal, theocratic, unstable government from acquiring nuclear weapons, it would be a gift by the Jewish state to humanity.”
If Israel carried out Poilievre and Blair’s positions it would likely elicit a significant reaction from Iran. In turn, Israel would probably escalate and the two countries could descend into a war that may directly involve the US, which just announced it is sending 100 troops to Israel to operate a sophisticated anti-missile system.
Poilievre’s claim that Iran is “genocidal” is absurd. It’s Israel that’s been committing genocide for a year in Gaza. Iran is also less “dictatorial” than other countries in the region. Saudi Arabia has already executed 213 people this year and is far more repressive towards women. While Iran’s 290-person parliament reserves five seats for Armenians (two) Assyrians, Zoroastrians and Jews, the Saudi monarchy effectively bans the Christian Bible.
Iranian democracy has never been a priority for Ottawa, as Owen Schalk and I note in Canada’s Long Fight Against Democracy. In 1953 the US and Britain overthrew Iran’s first popularly elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh and Ottawa played a small part in this destruction of Iranian democracy.
Mossadegh wanted Iran to benefit from its huge oil reserves. Following the British lead, Canada’s external minister criticized the Iranians move to nationalize its oil. In May 1951 external minister Lester Pearson told the House of Commons the “problem can be settled” only if the Iranians keep in mind the “legitimate interests of other people who have ministered to the well-being of Iran in administering the oil industry of that country which they have been instrumental in developing.” Later that year Pearson complained about the Iranians’ “emotional” response to the English.
In response to the nationalization, the British organized an embargo of Iranian oil, which Ottawa followed. The embargo weakened Mossadegh’s government, enabling the CIA’s subsequent drive to topple the nationalist prime minister.
Ottawa did not protest the overthrow of Iran’s first elected prime minister. Privately, External Affairs celebrated. Four months after the coup, Canada’s ambassador in Washington cabled Ottawa about “encouraging reports from their [US] embassy in Tehran on the growing strength of the present [coup] government.”
Establishing diplomatic relations with Iran in 1955, Canada followed the lead of the UK and US in doing business with the brutal dictatorship of Mohammad-Reza Shah Pahlavi, which ruled for 26 years.
Throughout the Shah’s reign Canadian politicians visited regularly. Ontario Premier William Davis, for instance, went to meet the Shah in September 1978. During the 1970s the Canadian government’s Defence Programs Bureau had a representative in Tehran and Canada sold about $60 million ($250 million today) worth of arms to Iran during the decade. This was during a time when Amnesty International reported “no country in the world has a worse record in human rights than Iran.” The Shah’s brutal SAVAK intelligence forces killed tens of thousands, which prompted little condemnation from Ottawa. In fact, in the early 1970s, $250,000 ($1 million today) worth of Canadian aid went to the University of Montréal’s International Center for Comparative Criminology (ICCC) whose advisors in Iran, according to ICCC director Dennis Szabo, “trained police forces in the use of the most modern methods to suppress protest demonstrations and the causes of criminality.”
Not Long after the Shah’s 1979 departure, Canada closed its embassy in Tehran, which wouldn’t reopen until after Iran won a US-backed war instigated by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Over the next quarter century, the two countries had limited ties. As part of its extreme pro-Zionist bent, the Harper Conservatives severed diplomatic relations with Iran in 2012. Justin Trudeau promised to restart relations prior to being elected but his bid to do so was thwarted by the Israel lobby working through ultra-Zionist Liberal caucus members Anthony Housefather and Michael Levitt.
Relations spiraled downwards after the January 2020 US assassination of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani in Iraq and Iran mistakenly downed an airplane with 50 Iranian Canadians aboard in the aftermath. The fall 2022 Woman Life Freedom protests boosted anti-Iranian sentiment and in June the Trudeau government listed part of Iran’s military, the 100,000 strong Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, as a terrorist entity.
In recent years Canadian politicians have been increasingly close with the violent, cult-like, Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), which has assisted Israel in assassinating Iranian scientists. The MEK is excited at the prospects of Israel’s war with Iran as is the son of the deposed Shah, former crown prince Reza Pahlavi. Both view an Israel/US war against Iran as an opportunity to come to power.
While neoconservatives argue a war would somehow “bring democracy” to Iran, history proves that is a lie. Just look at Libya or Iraq. Instead, the war would be about destroying the only military that Israel views as a significant rival. And teaching yet another lesson to any country that threatens US hegemony.
As for Canadian politicians who encourage Israel to unleash even more violence after a year of genocide in Gaza whose side are they on? Certainly not humanity’s.
Yves Engler’s latest book is Canada’s Long Fight Against Democracy.
