By Michael Regenstreif
As I write this column on the morning of September 14, it is exactly one week after Canada suddenly broke off diplomatic relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The federal government had already quietly evacuated what was a skeletal diplomatic staff in Tehran when it ordered Iran’s diplomats in Ottawa to leave the country within five days. We hadn’t had ambassadorial level relations with Iran since 2007, and relations have been particularly strained since 2003, when Zahra Kazemi, an Iranian-Canadian photographer, was arrested, tortured and killed by the Iranian regime.
In Ottawa, it was big news in January 2011, when officials at Library and Archives Canada cancelled the Free Thinking Film Society’s screening of Iranium, a documentary critical of Iran’s efforts to acquire a nuclear bomb, bowing to pressure from the Iranian embassy. The federal government was quick to recognize how wrong it was to allow the Iranians to exert any such influence and the screening was rescheduled when Heritage Minister James Moore stepped in.
There was no shortage of reasons to break off relations with Iran. As Foreign Minister John Baird said in his statement, Iran is “the most significant threat to global peace and security in the world today.”
As Baird went on to explain, “The Iranian regime is providing increasing military assistance to the Assad regime; it refuses to comply with UN resolutions pertaining to its nuclear program; it routinely threatens the existence of Israel and engages in racist antisemitic rhetoric and incitement to genocide; it is among the world’s worst violators of human rights; and it shelters and materially supports terrorist groups, requiring the Government of Canada to formally list Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism under the Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act.
“Moreover, the Iranian regime has shown blatant disregard for the Vienna Convention and its guarantee of protection for diplomatic personnel. Under the circumstances, Canada can no longer maintain a diplomatic presence in Iran.”
While the list of Baird’s reasons for cutting our last remaining diplomatic ties to Iran’s Islamist government were spot on, the question turned on the suddenness of the announcement, which came while both Baird and Prime Minister Stephen Harper were in Russia attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders’ conference.
All the reasons Baird cited would have been just as valid months ago and almost all of them years ago. Why the suddenness on September 7? With the situation vis-à-vis Iran such as it has been for such a long period of time, why didn’t we make this move before or why couldn’t it have waited another 10 days when the announcement could have been made in the House of Commons?
I would have to assume the government decided to act when it did because it was aware of an imminent threat – or the real possibility of a threat – to our diplomats.
There was some media speculation, denied by Baird, that we had advance knowledge of an impending attack on Iran by Israel. Baird said the safety of our diplomats was a primary concern.
Indeed, concern for the safety of Western diplomats in Iran has been a major consideration since the Islamist regime came to power in 1979 and Iranian students took control of the American embassy and held American diplomats hostage for more than a year. The United States has not had diplomatic relations with Iran since.
And, just 10 months ago, Great Britain closed its embassy in Tehran and expelled Iranian diplomats from London after mobs stormed and vandalized the British embassy in Tehran. Canada acted just four days before the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Might we have been aware of a particular threat tied to the anniversary?
As it happened, much of the Islamic world exploded on September 11 – when the American ambassador to Libya and three members of his staff were brutally murdered – and in the few days since in riots sparked by a crude, pathetic depiction of Muhammad, the founder of Islam, posted to YouTube. The insulting video – which was actually online for more than two months before the riots broke out – was obviously meant to inflame Muslim fundamentalists.
Early media reports accepted the filmmaker’s claim that his name was Sam Bacile, an Israeli-American. It turned out that Bacile was one of many aliases of a Coptic Christian Egyptian-American with previous convictions for financial crimes. Despite that revelation, as I write, PressTV, the Iranian regime’s English-language propaganda agency, is reporting the film to be the work of “more than 100 Zionists.”
Given what has transpired in the Middle East in recent days, Canada’s decision to act on Iran when it did, seems timely.
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